


mine eyes blind as glass

by oriflamme



Series: robots. robots everywhere [15]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Brainwashing, Chirolinguistics, Dissociation, Domestication, Functionist Universe, Gen, Torture, Totalitarian regime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 00:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13422936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: Fortress Maximus's function is to protect.For the Functionist Council, that is a problem.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have problems with how Lost Light handled the Functionist Universe we saw in MTMTE, and now I gotta fix it.

Fortress Maximus comes online knowing three things. That his function is to [protect], and that he is to report directly to the Evaluator.

And his designation. But that seems insignificant - it is the first thing he thinks of, but otherwise irrelevant, and he gives it no further thought. 

He waits while the thawing slab rotates on its axis and sets him on his feet. The medical restraints unclamp, and he steps away as unused _sentio metallico_ sluices away through drains in the floor to be recycled in the next mold. His frame, according to the HUD over his right optic, is currently operating at 94% functionality; his new set of outermost armor needs to finish integrating with his protoform. The order to report to the Evaluator supersedes that, though. An attendant in medical red and white leads him out of the thawing chamber without a word to him, scribbling notes on their datapad. Fortress Maximus looks back over his shoulder - the additional armor on his neck and arms throws him off for a moment, until the integration clicks up another percentage point and his proprioceptors adjust - and recognizes his own outline etched in the thawing slab. Then he turns to follow the medic, and it passes out of sight. 

Many memory files and programs came pre-installed in his processor - knowledge of the hallways around them included. As the medic navigates the halls, he calls them up in the HUD after only a moment's uncertainty. He traces the path they take through the medical sector, but that can only occupy so much of his mind. The medic's continued silence leaves Fortress Maximus at loose ends, his presence unacknowledged, and he does not know what to say to start a conversation himself. A helpful file in his processor surges to the fore and lays out a flowchart for him: the medic outranks him until Fortress Maximus passes the evaluation and is assigned his official rank. Right now he's [unemployed], only a silicon wafer-breadth away from [nothing]. Which means, essentially, _everyone_ outranks him. He has no right to initiate a conversation with his superiors until he has a place. 

Everyone has their place. 

A throb of anxiety spikes in his spark. Fortress Maximus presses his hand over his chest and holds it there until the roiling panic smooths out of his systems. He can't detect any outside stimuli that could have triggered the sudden reaction, yet it earns him a pause and a cool stare from the medic. " _Control_ yourself," the medic says, corner of their mouth tugging into a curl of disgust. 

That sets off another roil of anxiety. This time, Fortress Maximus tempers the electromagnetic shift that threatens to shudder in time with his spark. EM field. He needs to remember that; it must have been...impolite to broadcast his emotions that way. Being freshly thawed is no excuse. This medic may not be the Evaluator himself, but they only need to call him [defective] once. To be [defective] is almost worse than being [obsolete]. He knows it, as surely as he knows his own name. Nauseated, he blanks his face out, desperate to look neutral and pliant and obedient. A strut in his arm shakes as the medic stares him down, the tension juddering down to his wrist - his _fingers_ \- 

Until the medic spins around and continues down the hall, without a sound. 

Once he's sure the medic is distracted again, Fortress reaches up, his arm shifting slowly so his joints won't creak, and touches his face to try to feel his expression. His mouth trembles. His optics have cycled to their widest setting; the hallway seems weirdly flat and remote compared to the medic's back, and he can't remember how to take a step. Like his feet have stuck magnetically to the floor. 

Stiff, Fortress Maximus forces himself to follow the medic again. He doesn't know what it means, that his frame reports 96% functionality and yet -

He traces other routes on his internal maps of the facility, instead. Familiarizing himself with the different sectors can only help him in the future, if he passes evaluation. He identifies key items with new-thawed curiosity: the location of the nearest energon dispensaries, washracks, weapon lockers, and areas where his map becomes a blur of unlabeled halls and classified sectors, the content redacted due to his lack of security clearance.

Strange. He can't find any exits. 

He wonders why he even looked for one.

-

Evaluation, Fortress's processor tells him, is one of the cornerstones of a functioning society. The Evaluator presides over one of the busiest sectors of the Cog. From the moment the medic leads him through the carefully delineated security gates between medical and Evaluation, hundreds of mechs swarm around them. Everyone walks with utter surety, cutting between each other and crisscrossing the room. His processor spits a rapid-fire analysis at him, identifying the yellow and purple tags of theoconomists, the red and teal of the Inquisitor's legislacerators, the purple and grey of examiners. A constant hum of vocal and subvocal comms buzzes in the air, pressing around Fortress like a palpable weight on his sensors. He's double the height of almost everyone in the room, including the medic, and is instantly awkward about it. He gingerly picks his way through the crowd by sticking as close to the medic's heels as he can, but mechs flow through the space between them when he hesitates. Fortress shuffles his feet along the ground rather than lifting them, and prays not to knock into someone with his heavy limbs. 

They're all so...small. He fights down the instinctive urge to lock up and plant his feet until the small rushing things stop brushing against him, and forges after the medic with a spark of desperation. 

Unlike some of the mechs they pass, strapped to examination berths and screaming as they are examined, Fortress is escorted directly to the Evaluator. The tenth Councilor hovers at the center of the immense circular chamber at the heart of the Evaluation sector, flanked on either side by aides and guards who stand tall enough to make Fortress feel less like a tank in a visor shop. A wall of screens and holo projections encircles the platform, fanning up and out toward the distant ceiling overhead, 

The medic crosses a clear stretch of ground between the rushing crowd and the Evaluator's domain, and Fortress takes advantage of it to lengthen his stride and catch up. Several eyes lock onto him - the aides' assessing him from multiple different angles, the guards' bright with the glint of targeting HUDs - but it's the Evaluator's level, single optic, rising from the screens embedded in the floor to inspect him, that freezes Fortress Maximus in his place.

The Evaluator, the Tenth-of-Twelve, has a simple, sparing frame with no excess armor or parts. His helm frames one immense yellow optic, and his gaze zeroes in on Fortress Maximus as he takes another step forward. 

To be the sole focus of that unrelenting, singular stare would be intimidating enough. But the effect is compounded by the weight of the Councilor's many aides: all staring at Fortress, all with the same expression in their strange, strange optics. That tremor runs through the strut in his arm again. The medic briskly walks off, and vanishes through one of the exits leading away from the hub without another word.

"Designation?" the Evaluator says, at last.

For a moment, Fortress Maximus doesn't remember how to speak. He's never done it before. Thankfully, his vocalizer takes three seconds to boot up for the first time; his voice sounds rough and unfamiliar to his own sensors, but otherwise perfectly functional. "Fortress Maximus. Serial code 4131136128," he says. His frame shifts automatically under - shoulders straight, arms locked by his sides, his head up at attention. Two conflicting protocol processes grate against each other for a moment, one insisting that he lower his gaze deferentially. The one that urges him to stand at attention wins out. 

In the Grand Machine of Cybertronian society, Fortress is two rungs from the bottom. The mech that steps off the hover panel and stalks around Fortress Maximus in a circle, scrutinizing him from helm to foot like he's a particularly boring piece of rebar, is at the top. "Function?" The Councilor paces around Fortress again, idly, his flock of aides clustered in his wake. 

Another simple one. "To protect."

And somehow, the moment Fortress says it, he knows that's the _wrong answer_. It's one of the first things he thought, fundamental, unquestioned in the brief time he's been thawed - and he's wrong. He's made a mistake.

The Evaluator stops midstride. His aides jerk around to stare at Fortress with renewed fervor, a few with furrowed brows and one - a purple and black functionary with four optics - with a glare as they scan and rescan him, but the Evaluator's optic refocuses more slowly. Some unidentifiable emotion crawls in Fortress's spark; he's frozen, too rigid to vent, every other process put on hold. 

"Interesting," the Evaluator says, like someone else might say 'disgusting.' His optic shifts back from red to yellow. "But no. Your function is to [guard]."

Fortress ducks his head at once. "My function is to guard," he repeats, gratefully, his spark burning with shame. The difference between the glyphs used for each word is obvious, once the Evaluator says it out loud. Being freshly thawed is no excuse for making such a basic error in front of a Councilor.

"Better." 

Then the Evaluator turns, his heavy purple cloak swirling around him, and all of his aides turn in a practiced flurry of rearranging frames. It's only then that Fortress realizes that they're all _linked together_. That at least forty interface cords hang between them, one from the neck of each aide, to plug into the array along the Councilor's unarmored spinal column. Not a one of them tangles or twists as the aides spin around. They adjust to the Councilor's movements with honed precision, like a well-oiled machine, and Fortress takes an involuntary step back. His heel wobbles, teetering on the edge of the platform. 

But the Evaluator walks away, and Fortress, still rigid with embarrassment and conscious of the optics lingering on him, hurries after him.

They exit the hub through a door directly behind the central platform. Security scanners flank the doorway, along with more guards. The Councilor raises a hand and the door slides open with a smooth _click_ as the scanner reads his credentials. Half of the Evaluator's aides file away, their interface cords retracted at some unspoken signal, and filter back into the crowd. Fortress fixes his eyes forward on the back of the Councilor's helm and attempts to walk with purpose. Like he knows where he's going. He measures his steps so he stays a respectful two meters behind the Councilor's remaining entourage. 

The floor slopes down, though it's difficult to tell to say how steeply. At each door they come to, more aides shave off the edges and scatter. It takes Fortress a moment to notice that the HUD over his eye has changed, so that it displays security clearance, serial numbers, functions, and preliminary risk assessments when he focuses on the aides. With each security checkpoint, those without the appropriate security clearance to continue peel away from the Evaluator and rush off to attend other duties. Soon, only a select handful remain. 

When Fortress checks his internal map, his own security clearance is now level eight. Many of the blank, blurred sectors are now filled in, with minute details marked in to indicate security checkpoints and roaming security cams. They've ventured deep into the Cog, along the dividing line between Evaluation and Inquisition.

"We are all cogs in the Grand Machine, Fortress Maximus," the Councilor says, as they descend deeper into the core of the Cog. "Each of us with a role, each of us in our place. You have been born with the purpose of guarding a highly classified object."

"I understand."

He realizes that he doesn't _really_ understand when they reach their destination. The door to the chamber sprawls over the clear line between Evaluation and Inquisition in his mental map, bridging the two in a way that makes Fortress's pre-programmed files squirm with discomfort. When he trails the Councilor inside, only one aide remains with them. There are more below, however - examiners, their purple and grey armor splattered with flecks of bright, queasy-pink energon as they slice open the fuel lines of the mech magnetized to the table. 

Not a lot of energon, Fortress's processor recognizes, through the sudden haze of nausea. They've carefully and thoroughly dismantled the mech's arm from shoulder to wrist, the struts and wires and circuits spread out wide in the open air, to the point that Fortress struggles to accept that it still _is_ an arm. It's just - parts. The inner shell of the mech's arm plating is a warm gold, pale but vibrant, compared to the dulled orange of the rest of him. 

His optics are still online. He's not even twitching as they take him apart. 

"This thing," the Evaluator says, indicating the mech clamped on the examination berth, "is to be guarded in the strictest confidence. You will speak to no one below security clearance level seven about what you see before you. You will obey no orders concerning the object from anyone below security clearance level nine." 

Fortress can only swallow. His hands feel very cold - he can't tell if that tremor's back or not. His frame is so far away. If there's a prepackaged response to...this ( _yes sir_ ) his vocalizer can't seem to force it out.

A rough, quiet voice answers for him. "Hello, Ten. Always - a pleasure." It cuts out for a split second, a tangible moment of empty air, before resuming, but Fortress can't bring himself to look down again to see what the examiners did to provoke it. His optics fixate on the smooth railing under the Evaluator's hands. 

The mech sounds exhausted. 

"Who is he?" Fortress asks; his own voice echoes oddly in his ears. He shouldn't question a Councilor, he _should not be asking questions_ , his mind screams, but it's too late.

The Councilor's voice smacks him like a sharp rebuke. A correction. " _It_ is nothing. A perversion. A blasphemy. Something that defies evaluation, has no known function, and stubbornly refuses a place in Cybertronian society."

Fortress, still staring at the railing, doesn't register his own flinch. He stares at the Evaluator's hands - his fingers clamped tightly on the railing, hard enough to crimp the metal. The Councilor's hands quiver. 

Fury radiates off him like a heat from a churning smelter. Fortress wishes desperately that he couldn't feel it. That he could turn his electromagnetic sensors off and stop sensing the _agony_ from below that turns the whole room into a smear of bright lights and sharp metal.

"I'm a decoration. An ornament. Please, I - I - I -" The mech's voice cracks and starts to glitch as one of the torturexaminers pries open the armor of his hand, clicking and repeating a single syllable over and over. He sounds so tired. As though he's given this answer before, a thousand times before, or more - 

"Yet it somehow managed to subvert three of its four previous guards," the Evaluator continues, his face a mask of impassivity, as though he hadn't heard a word. "You will guard this object against any unauthorized attempts to claim or remove it from the facility. You will also monitor the object closely for any indication of what its true function may be, as well as for any signs that of it subverting your fellow guard."

Below, the nameless mech laughs. The sound makes Fortress flinch even harder than the first time. "Y-you already monitor me at all times, anyway. What's another set of optics going t-to do for any of us?"

"Under no circumstances is the object to be free from its restraints. If at any point the restraints fail, you are to prevent the object's self-termination by any means at your disposal," the Evaluator finishes, his voice crisp and level and relentless. 

" _Please_." The mech's vocalizer cracks again. Fortress's gaze drifts as the numbness climbs up his arms and lodges in his chest, and he watches as one of the examiners ruthlessly peels the mech's wires away from his struts.

"Yes sir. I understand."

-

Fortress follows his internal map to the mech's cell. He reviews the guard schedule as he walks to keep his processor occupied. According to the schedule - which only a 'Red Alert' has editing privileges for - his guard shift resumes as soon as the examiners finish for the day. When he scans ahead for the next few months, Fortress realizes that entire chunks of the schedule are blank. They schedule the examination sessions in advance.

His internal sensors insist that he's not cold, that his temperature hasn't deviated from the accepted standard for his make and model even once in the past hour. It still takes a long time for sensation to return to his hands. 

Thankfully, he has it: the route to the prison cell leads back up through the layers of the Cog, toward the core. The walls transition from plain, functional grey to more ornate white and gold, with ceremonial script and symbols that Fortress doesn't recognize engraved in the metal. He's close to the central intersection of all twelve sections of the Cog, the area where the segments come together and you can step from one to another between one hall and the next. Just a few floors below him lays the Council Chambers, at the most central point, where Functionist Council convenes to discuss matters of the state.

The gold-plated door of the cell more closely resembles a vault than any of the doors Fortress passed on the way here. More security scanners wait for him - an optic reader, a frequency scanner that drags through his EM field like sandpaper to identify his spark type (argentum-positive), and a CNA processor, in addition to a standard identity chip reader that scans his hand. After the vault door cycles open, he spends a full thirty minutes staring at the machine in the center of the room, alone, for lack of anything else to do. He reviews some of the information files after that, until he understands how the restraints work. One cuff for each arm, one for each leg, and the central clamp for the body, with a secondary attachment to immobilize the helm and neck and prevent reflexive transformation. 

Apparently, that was an issue before. The prisoner attempted to initiate a transformation sequence while improperly restrained, and nearly tore his body apart along the seams.

The examiners deliver him two hours later. Fortress stands at attention, his joints locked in place; his processor automatically freezes up at the sight of the mech. Luckily, the examiners don't appear to notice his stiff stance - they lock the clamps around the prisoner's limbs (including a completely reconstructed right arm) and then use the spherical control panel to raise him away from the floor and suspend him in midair. They file out in a faint cloud of chatter and laughter, and then the vault door seals shut behind them.

Only the mech's pained, rattling vents fill the silence. The gasping doesn't ease as the minutes tick by. Fortress stands, mute and frozen, by the wall opposite the mech, unable to move. It's as good a vantage point for a guard as any. 

At least the mech is in one piece, now. Fortress can look at him without feeling cold, but a palpable awkwardness takes its place. He has no real guidelines for interacting with a prisoner. His HUD, when directed to scan the prisoner, reveals a serial code - 100000000 - a function of [nothing], and a risk assessment filled with red warning glyphs. No designation.

He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know if he _should_ say anything. 

_You were born for this,_ the Evaluator said. Without that, Fortress doesn't have any other use.

So why doesn't he know what he's doing?

Internal diagnostics report that the vague nausea lingering in his tanks is a parasympathetic response from his subcutaneous circuitry, brought on by an inconsequential process looping in the limbic section of his brain module. Something that would be cleared up during recharge and defragmentation. Safe to disregard. 

A sigh and creak, as the prisoner shifts in his restraints. He can't move at all, really - his joints and transformation seams flex a little, but the cuffs don't have much give by design - but the movement startles Fortress like a gun fired next to his ear. An automated program tries to ready one of the weapons integrated in his new armor. Fortress overrules it with a shudder. 

"It's nice to meet you," the prisoner says. His vocalizer is clearly on its last leg: worn soft and raspy by whatever the examiners did to him. When Fortress cautiously lifts his optics and forces himself to focus on the mech's face, he wears - of all things - a gentle, crooked smile. "My name is Rung. What's yours?"

Tearing his eyes away, Fortress shifts his weight. Another purposeless action; he has the frame and brain module necessary to remain at attention for weeks, if need be. But like the tremor in his arm that fades in and out of his awareness, he can't seem to help it. 

As it becomes clear that Fortress won't (can't) say anything in response, Rung resets his dim blue optics with a tired vent. "It's going to be a long shift for you. Please, if anything comes to mind, feel free to talk to me. I've been down here long enough that I know everything classified already, anyway."

He says it like it's such a simple thing. Both Fortress's programming and his orders from the Evaluator concur that he shouldn't discuss anything classified around here - but Rung _is_ the classified person. A trap? Fortress flounders internally and tries not to let it show on his face. The gulf between all of his preprogrammed knowledge and his actual experience feels impossibly wide, and he can't seem to get the image of Rung's arm peeled open for nanoscopic inspection out of his mind. 

Rung shifts again, a ragged flutter of what few armor plates along his arms and legs aren't contained by the restraints. The right arm remains painfully still. "Pardon me, but - how old are you?" he asks, after a while. Still exhausted, still quiet. 

That...is probably not classified information. It's so basic and self-evident, in fact, that Fortress responds to the social cue without thinking. "I came online three hours ago," he says, before his mouth snaps shut with a rattling clang. More than likely, according to his basic knowledge, his spark matured and forged its body out of the proto- _sentio metallico_ over the course of decades before onlining here, but he doesn't think that counts. 

Up until that point, Rung's EM field didn't even brush Fortress's sensors. Which was surprising, given how much pain his reconstructed arm must be in as it stretches on the rack of the restraints. Now, Fortress catches a quicksilver flicker of _surprise._ "So new. I didn't think -" Rung cuts himself off. The thick plates of his brow draw together in a frown. "Well. Never mind."

"Think what?"

"That there were any new sparks left. The last known hot spot went cold four million years ago, at Alyon. I knew the Council inherited the Senate's stockpile, but word came that they ran through their supply at least fifty thousand years ago." Rung's frown twists, turns bitter. His face is the only part of him that can move to express himself.

Fortress sends a query through his memories, prodding at the preprogrammed information packages when they don't respond. He knows the basics of the Cybertronian lifestyle - what a hot spot is, how the sparks are nurtured until they grow into themselves - but he doesn't have anything quantitative like the exact number of new sparks in the world. Then again, with his function in life, he's not sure why he'd _need_ to know. "I don't know any of that," he admits, after another hollow, uncertain pause.

Rung turns his optics off, and does not brighten them again. He can't relax in his restraints, though. "I imagine not," he murmurs. As he drifts off, the exhaustion in his field laps against the edges of Fortress's awareness.

"Fortress Maximus," Fortress says, belatedly. 

Rung does not reply.

-

The examiners return eight hours later to retrieve Rung for another session. Rung, slow to rouse, collapses in a strutless heap on the floor before they haul him up, his legs too wobbly from forced tension to support him. One of the scientists nods at Fortress curtly before scrolling through his datapad and sailing out the door.

Which leaves Fortress to his own devices. His guidelines inform him that the most efficient use of his time would encompass refueling, recharging, and fulfilling other guard duties outside the vault, but nothing compels him to do any of the above. It would simply look strange if he didn't. The nearest energon dispensary marked on the map is located in the central hub, clearly intended for Council use between sessions, and he avoids it. The next nearest location marked on his map is located several minutes away from the core of the Cog, through a few security check points - back in the Evaluation section, nearer to Mediation than to Inquisition. In contrast to the crowded bustle at the heart of Evaluation, the hallways on this level seem oddly empty. Only the occasional roaming spy bot breaks up the quiet trip; after the first scan of Fortress's identity chip, none of the drones stop their patrol to investigate his presence.

The walls fade back to a utilitarian grey right before Fortress knocks into someone. Literally. He rounds a corner to reach the row of habsuites, washracks, and dispensary that marks a domestic segment, and crashes right into a spindly mech barely as high as his hip.

Unfortunately, in a contest between a tank and whatever this poor mech turns into, the tank wins. The mech hits the ground with a surprised yelp, the flared plates on the back of their shoulders scraping on the metal, and Fortress scrambles not to trip on them and make the situation ten times more mortifying than it already is. "I apologize. Are you alright?" he says, kneeling to help the mech up.

His HUD is a mass of red as the mech shakes their head and stands, wobbly but otherwise unfazed. Not nearly as dire a risk assessment as Rung's, but startling enough that Fortress blinks as he takes it in. Designation: Resonance, [exempt], and 'maximum flight risk; see exemption appendix.' "It's fine, no harm done. Are you lost?" the mech asks, their visor alight with laughter.

"I am off shift," Fortress says, instead; he knows exactly where he is in relation to the dispensary, but he can't say he doesn't feel lost in general. 

The mech dances back a step and inclines their head, their expression mischievous. Fortress realizes, with a jolt, that he can't identify their alt mode at all - almost all their gold and white armor's stripped down to bare plating, leaving little more than a slim frame with out-of-context transformation seams. "Nice to meet you, Off Shift. I'm Resonance," they say. Their vocalizer chimes with a barely-suppressed laugh.

"No - I - my designation is -"

Resonance stifles another giggle. "Sorry, I can see your designation. I shouldn't tease," they say, ruefully, as they tap their golden visor. Fortress wonders what their HUD looks like, compared to his. "Most of us take energon down the hall, if you don't mind company."

He doesn't. Despite the strange risk assessment, Resonance isn't Rung; Fortress doesn't _think_ he needs to second guess himself about joining them. Resonance takes three skipping strides for each of Fortress's steps, peppering him with polite questions until they reach the dispensary. 

They receive their assigned rations before Fortress works himself up to ask the question on his mind. "What is your function? I...don't understand your alt mode," he says, after one last attempt to figure it out on his own.

Resonance sobers. "Heh. Didn't online you with an 'unspoken etiquette of the Cog' patch, huh?" they say. Then they wave a hand. "Not your fault, don't worry about it." 

Fortress hesitates, his instinct to apologize stymied. Resonance sits at a corner table with seats built to support mechs up to Fortress's weight class, their legs dangling a meter above the ground. 

"I have no alt mode, these days. It was...I am...well." Resonance shrugs, and sips at their energon. It's barely a quarter of what Fortress received from the automatic dispenser. Even that small sip drains half the cube. "The Evaluator determined my function lies in music. In singing. However, that is not the function I was originally born for, and singing is...an unnecessary function. I was defective and not employed, but the Council in their mercy gave me a place in this world. An exemption. They stripped my alt mode as my penance, and now I sing for them here. And I am so very happy!" 

They spread their fingers wide. Something is terribly off about their smile. It doesn't match what little he can sense of their EM field. 

Fortress stares, transfixed, and for a horrible moment all he can see is Resonance clamped to an examination berth. "Are you? Happy?" His vocalizer stutters. 

A flare of _warning_ brushes him; Resonance abruptly averts their optics behind their visor. Their rictus of a smile stays welded firmly in place as they reach across the table and take Fortress's hand. "You are very new, and I forgive you. But please, don't look at someone when you say such things," they say, as they begin to move their fingers against Fortress's palm. Fortress glances down for a second, then wrenches his gaze to the side at another _warning_. 

He stares at his sickly pink cube of energon instead, while Resonance painstakingly spells out simple glyphs against his palm. His hand dwarfs theirs.

[You are their eyes.]

"I don't understand," he says, because he doesn't. His throat feels tight, as though the nausea can't be contained within his chest anymore. 

Resonance begins to write on his palm again. They say something completely different out loud, their voice light and steady and their optics locked on Fortress's shoulder, and it takes Fortress some mental maneuvering to follow both methods of conversation at the same time. "I'm very happy. All I ever wanted was for my singing to be useful. And now it is. I owe the Council everything."

[Cameras in our optics. Full spectrum surveillance.]

Fortress's arm shivers. Resonance sets his trembling hand back down on the table for him with great care. "I...see," Fortress says, his voice remote, thankful that there is no one else in the room with them. 

"Thank you for your understanding," Resonance says, still in that too-calm voice. They flick a finger against Fortress's untouched energon, making the cube ring. When Fortress finally dares look at their face with his optics - _cameras?_ \- all he sees is sad sympathy. "You should complete a rest cycle. Always make efficient use of your time."

The energon ration is far too dark a pink. Like it's already been processed. 

"Of course. Thank you."

-

After leaving Resonance, he finds his assigned recharging quarters without incident. Living space is at a premium in the Cog, but his habsuite, located just a few floors away from Rung's cell, accommodates his heavily armored frame with ease. There's a slot in the wall where another recharge berth can slide out, which implies someone else should be staying here with him - perhaps one of the guards that Rung somehow subverted, according to the Councilor - but for now it's more space than he needs. 

His recharge cycle drags on in a restless haze, plagued by static-blurred feedback. He can't remember any of it when he wakes. His internal alarm pings him; the scheduled examination period is due to end in ten minutes, and then Fortress will resume his guard shift until his counterpart arrives for the next day. 

He returns to the vault and inspects the symbols carved into the walls as he waits for them to bring Rung back. After all the turmoil in his emotional cortex - the defragmentation report says he went into shock at some point, which troubles him - Fortress feels more exhausted than he did before he slept. He keeps his EM field tucked tightly around him so that none of the scientists and examiners wander into it and sense his lingering nausea. 

Now that he knows what to look for, the guidelines in his processor insist that the cameras embedded within his optics are state of the art. Fully integrated, just like his new armor. Rolled out first among the denizens of the Cog, and more recently among the members of the Primal Vanguard, they provide vital intelligence and surveillance capabilities for the good of Cybertron. As a guard, he can have limited access to someone else's optical feed if he requests it from a functionary for security purposes.

It all feels so...wrong. The knowledge that this is standard operating procedure somehow leaves Fortress even more lost than before. Something deep in his chest twists at the very thought of someone else watching from behind his eyes.

Rung hangs unconscious in the restraints for four hours before he comes back online. Fortress's audials pick up a chattering sound. His legs have locked up again, but he forces himself to leave the safety of the far wall and approach the mech at the center of the cell to investigate. 

Shivering hard enough to rattle against his own restraints, Rung meets Fortress's eyes. Up close, cracks and chips cover his entire frame, including his face. Many sections of his paint have worn away to bald metal where he's been handled so many times. They've put his insides back where they belong (how many times?) but never bothered to fix up his face or outermost armor.

His elbows both bend the wrong way. They left his arms broken and strung him up. How much pain is he in? 

Fortress is suddenly, horribly certain that they didn't give Rung any form of anesthetic before taking his arm apart.

"Welcome back. Have you been waiting long? Must've dozed off," Rung says. His voice sounds broken rather than groggy. As though Fortress can even contemplate small talk at a time like this. 

"Are you in pain?" Fortress asks. His hand rises, then drops back to his side, paralyzed with indecision.

"Always, I'm afraid." Rung smiles. This close to him, Fortress can sense the tattered edges of Rung's own field - a constant, muted throb of _pain_. He didn't try to repress it earlier, in the examination room; just sensing the ragged edge of it reminds Fortress of the sharp, shattering agony that distorted the room, and he has to take a step back when his processor starts to ache. "Nothing I can't manage."

This...can't be right. Someone must have made a mistake. Fortress can't understand why they would leave Rung broken, otherwise. There's no _point._ "Why have you not been properly repaired? If the medics have not completed their function adequately -"

A hacking cough interrupts him. The fit shakes Rung for a long moment before subsiding. "I think I should stop you there. I don't see medics much, these days. Just the examiners," Rung states, like it's just a fact of life. Fortress feels like he missed a step on the stairs. "One does wonder how many times you can take someone apart and put them back together again before admitting there's nothing to find."

He uses the same glyphs for [nothing] that appear in his risk assessment profile. Something less than empty, something worse than obsolete. 

What had the Evaluator called Rung? A blasphemy. Someone who couldn't be evaluated and assigned a function. "They want to know your function? Or your alt mode?"

Rung raises both his eyebrows. Fortress can't help but stare at them for a moment, before he remembers his optics are recording all this. With a shudder, he switches to stare over Rung's shoulder instead. "Both. Either. I suspect that at this point, no answer would truly satisfy them," Rung says.

"Earlier, you called yourself an ornament. Was that...not correct?" Fortress's hand tries to reach up again; he wraps his arms around himself instead, fighting down another pulse of unease. Nothing makes sense. It's like there is some fundamental disconnect between the knowledge and guidelines that came pre-installed in his brain module, and how he feels about it all in practice. He can't reconcile the two. 

Rung tries to sag in his restraints - but the slight shift puts pressure on his right arm, and Fortress sees the whole limb spasm with pain that pinches Rung's face. The spike of _agony_ stops his spark for a second. "'Ornament' is what they assigned me when I was first evaluated," Rung says, his voice tight. Fortress almost wants to order him to stop talking when it's costing him so much effort, but... "I was a therapist. It was a new field, at the time. So far as I am aware, it doesn't exist anymore. Mnemosurgery and personality adjustments are considered far more _efficient_ for dealing with processor glitches and trauma, these days _._ But my alt mode is...well, nothing. I can't even move when transformed. So when the Council declared psychology an obsolete field, they revoked my ornament classification and brought me to the Cog for further study. I've been here ever since."

Another paroxysm of pain sweeps over Rung. Fortress trips over his own feet trying to backpedal out of his EM field range, though he catches himself before he can crash against the floor. _Everyone has their place_ repeats in his processor, a Functionist aphorism that came preloaded along with most of his basic knowledge and skills. 

Everyone except Rung.

"And you really don't know what you are? I -" Fortress's vocalizer skips. He switches his gaze to stare at the floor, at anything apart from Rung. "I knew. From the moment I came online," he says, helplessly, feeling very much a day old. Compared to everyone else in the Cog - compared to Rung - compared to two million years of torture calling itself examination -

Something in his _processor_ skips, an unsettling mental lurch.

Rung's voice clouds with the static of agony. Somehow, he still sounds gentle. "Then you're very lucky. Some mecha struggle to find themselves. It can cause them a great deal of distress, particularly if they're forbidden from choosing the function they feel most suited for."

'Choosing' sets off a firestorm of warning pings in Fortress's processors. At the same time, Rung's right arm wrenches involuntarily, a powerful spasm that floods the room with more sharp waves of pain. Fortress dismisses the warnings and makes an aborted move for the control panel, dragging the emergency instructions for how to operate the restraints out of his pre-installed memories."Here, let me -" he starts to say, his brain full of half-processed thoughts of taking Rung to the medical sector. He can't stay like this. 

"Hey!"

Before he can touch the panel, Fortress freezes in place. His audials and other sensors locate the source of the unfamiliar voice before his head turns, his HUD already identifying the speaker for him. In the headache-inducing flood of warning pings, he'd missed the notification that his fellow security guard was checking in at the door. 

"Red Alert," Fortress says, snapping to attention. Red Alert outranks him, technically. 

The red, white, and grey mech scowls and stalks through the door. His face is angular, his armored helm heavy and wrapped around his neck in such a way that must making turning it difficult. Hexagonal plates frame his face. "Have you been talking to the object?" Red Alert demands. His optics pin Fortress where he stands as effectively as iron rods through his feet. 

Fortress is piercingly aware that he's too close to Rung. His earlier instinct to stay near the wall aligned perfectly with internal guidelines telling him to keep a safe distance away from a prisoner under his protection. "Yes. I was asked by the Evaluator to help determine his function," he says, scrambling for a way to explain, aware that his posture is painfully rigid.

Red Alert's suspicious glare darkens. He finishes striding up to Fortress and shoves him back, away from Rung. He's built shorter and stockier than Fortress, but the force of his push nearly propels Fortress halfway across the chamber. "Do you even understand what you've done?! This could have been a major security breach!" Red Alert insists, his volume rising.

"No one ordered me not to talk to him -"

Red Alert cuts him off with a furious jab of his finger. "I am! Right now! Talking to it is the whole problem! You know who else talked to that thing?!" Incensed, he holds up three fingers right in front of Fortress's stunned face. "Streetwise. Deftwing. Powerflash."

Woozy guilt and tight terror curdle deep in his chest, and Fortress is glad that he hasn't let go of his EM field since dealing with the medic's withering disapproval. "Who?"

Flinging his arms out, Red Alert glares at Fortress. "Exactly! Talking to it is how it gets inside your head! It manipulates you, turns you against your friends, against the Council." He prods the side of his own helm for emphasis. His optics are a bright, piercing blue, full of accusation and unabated suspicion. When Fortress remains frozen at attention, the mech clicks his vocalizer with disgust and starts to pace, muttering to himself. "For all I know, you could already be compromised. I'm the only one left that _thing_ hasn't corrupted, and if you know what's good for you? You'll follow my _stringent_ security protocols, or I'll turn you in just like I did them."

Fortress doesn't dare look at Rung. Being berated by the mech who is effectively his superior officer on the first day - he could be recalled, or worse. The thought of being reported to the Council as a failure...

He stamps on the frenetic mess of emotion threatening to leak out of his chest, and falls back on preprogrammed responses. Brisk, clipped Neocybex, designed for maximum efficiency. Perfectly proper. Council approved. "Yes, Red Alert. I completely understand. What are the protocols?"

Red Alert sends them all in a heavily encrypted packet before Fortress finishes speaking. When Fortress finally puzzles out how to decrypt them - some of Red Alert's encryption keys are bafflingly unfamiliar to Fortress processor, and decidedly not standard for their level of security clearance - he pauses to scroll through the file in awe. It dwarfs all of Fortress's preprogrammed guidelines. There are over one thousand pages' worth of regulations for guarding Rung, each more comprehensively paranoid than the last. 

Red Alert has calculated the best possible vantage point along the wall to the nearest _centimeter_.

While Fortress absorbs all this, Red Alert grumbles and steers him out the door. "If I had my way, we wouldn't even be bringing someone else in to guard the damn thing," he says, an irritated rumble grinding audibly in his chest. "But apparently pulling continuous guard duty without recharge breaks impacts processor integrity, and I can't afford to slip. Neither can you. Give that thing an opening in your armor - any at all - and it'll mess with your head."

His lecture appears to have turned away from almost accusing Fortress of treason, at least. This is still about the worst possible impression he could have made on the head of Rung's security team. "I'll keep that in mind. I won't fail," Fortress promises.

Red Alert shoots him one last warning glare, then engages five extra locking mechanisms on the vault door as it irises shut. Fortress checks. He has neither the passwords nor the necessary clearance to open any of them.

-

When he next rotates in to guard Rung, a day later, both of Rung's arms are fixed. Fortress plants himself where Red Alert's protocols dictate, and stares at the floor beneath Rung with his armor clamped tight against his protoform. He doesn't relax it for even a moment.

Rung studies him in silence until the examiners come again. 


	2. Chapter 2

He's called to report to the Evaluator after seven days. Nothing in Fortress's brain module can tell him whether this is normal or not; if this is to be expected, or if Red Alert filed some kind of complaint that brings him back down to the heart of Evaluation with a sinking sensation in his spark. The head of Rung's security team only has hard, suspicious glares for Fortress whenever they trade off guarding the vault, and bombards him with a flood of follow-up protocols through the secure comm channel with a grunt, but Fortress had hoped that his emotion-driven slip had been forgiven. A consequence of being freshly thawed. 

A week has not prepared him for walking through Evaluation again. If anything, guarding Rung and meeting Resonance has only made it worse. Fortress cringes internally as he takes the most direct route to the Evaluator's hub and passes by examination berths. Teams of five evaluators crowd around each, peeling back armor and prodding at internals. Those with keen interest on their faces as they dismantle people make him shudder more than the ones who look on with cool indifference, and by the time Fortress reaches the Evaluator's platform he finds himself imitating the posture of everyone else in the moving crowd - head up, hands close to his sides, eyes fixed on his destination, because looking at anything else in the room would only make things worse. 

A thick, rope-like cord extends from the center of the hub to plug into the back of the Evaluator's neck, his optic cycling through shades of red as he observes something. He does not look up at Fortress's approach, though all the aides do. One of the Councilor's aides speaks for him, this time: a green and gold mech with thin wings, a single hooded optic, and no hands. "Guard Fortress Maximus. Status report."

Fortress folds his hands behind his back this time as he straightens his shoulders; he has found that this helps conceal that tremor in his arm whenever an unexpected emotional response threatens his composure. Resonance has made it very clear, slowly communicating their warnings on his hand whenever they meet: everyone in the Cog is watching, whether they want to or not. "I am functional, Councilor."

"Have you anything to report on the nature of the object in your custody?" the same aide asks. Their voice is flat and without nuance; they have to insert a syllable at the end of their sentence to indicate an interrogative, to make up for the lack of tone. Their vocalizer simply isn't built for it.

There is a difference, Fortress has learned, between the Councilors and their single optics, and the empuratees.

He lowers his gaze, trying his best to be unassuming and compliant. "I'm sorry, Councilor. I haven't been able to determine anything related to his function while standing guard."

'His' is a slip of the tongue - Fortress snaps his mouth shut after he realizes his error. A few of the mechs around the Cog list 'it' in their pronoun slot; the [it] the Councilor always uses for Rung has connotations of non-sentience that Fortress...can't adapt to. 

Thankfully, the Councilor is preoccupied with disconnecting from the direct processor connection. "It hasn't made any overtures towards you?" the Evaluator asks, absently, as his aides seamlessly move forward to remove the cable and let it sink back into the floor. With the connection broken, the Evaluator glides away, bypassing Fortress and descending from the platform to survey one of the nearby examination berths. 

Fortress turns to keep facing him, but doesn't move - he doesn't want to get any closer to the examination table than he has to. It leaves a sticky, crawling sensation in his chest. He can't detect any sign of pain emanating from the berth, but that doesn't mean there isn't some invasive form of examination going on less than a few meters from him. "...It has spoken to me during my shift. It hasn't said anything about its function, though," he says, trying to project calm obedience. 

Thankfully, the Evaluator doesn't press any further. In fact, he nods curtly, as though Fortress's failure is to be expected. "Continue to monitor the situation, then. You and Red Alert are not examiners, but one can never have too many sets of optics on a problem." The Evaluator snaps his fingers, and the mech on the berth sits up, unsteadily, under the collective stare of the Evaluator's aides. "Isn't that right, Dominus?" he adds, his voice - mocking.

The mech's head is a flat screen, painted the same white, grey, and dull yellow as the rest of his frame. There's a fundamental disconnect between his head and his body - his head looks too small compared to the breadth of his shoulders and torso. Fortress runs another visual scan, unnerved, but can find no sign of any optics or audials or any of the other usual sensors that tend to be located in or around one's head. Instead, a small camera sits mounted on the left side of his helm, the red recording light steady and bright.

Words appear on the mech's screen in flat, silent text. [Yes, Councilor.]

Something inside Fortress shudders again. He can't afford to dissociate from his processor here, with so many watchful eyes, but without that mental distance he feels physically ill.

The Evaluator sets a hand upon Dominus's shoulder, his fingers curled possessively as he guides the flathead away from the berth. "You are one of our exemptions now, Dominus Ambus," he says. The hem of his cloak flares out as he ascends the platform again, and Fortress backpedals desperately to avoid the trailing edge. "Trepan has told me you've learned a valuable lesson. And now, here in the Cog, we can put your talents to use for the greater good. A mind like yours can't be squandered on distracting, wasteful things like attachment."

Dominus inclines his screen in a nod. This close, Fortress can sense nothing from the mech's EM field except bleak, broken acceptance. [Yes, Councilor.]

"You will make a fine examiner. With your assistance here, the evaluation process for recalibrating the Taxonomy will proceed much more quickly. There will be no need for you to leave the Cog ever again." The Councilor raises his hand from Dominus's shoulder - Fortress does not miss how the mech shudders once the hand is gone - and waves Dominus away. "Join dismantling station 221."

[Yes, Councilor.]

Dominus Ambus turns, his flatscreen blank as he faces the examination berth he just stepped off. Fortress sees a bright, cheery mood prompt flash across Dominus's face. 

[Smile! Today is a good day! Tomorrow will be even better.]

Another examiner loads a mech with arching finials and cloven feet onto the table. Fortress catches a glimpse of their optics spitting sparks as they stare the ceiling high above, before Dominus closes the gap in the examiners' ranks.

-

The days stretch into weeks. 

Fortress isn't sure which would be worse - the thought that there's something wrong with the world, or that there's something wrong with _him_.

Every shift, he watches and does nothing as the scientists come to collect Rung, and bring him back - sometimes whole, sometimes not, but always in pain. Occasionally, Rung attempts to strike up a conversation, his wheezing voice shattering the uncomfortable quiet of the vault, but Fortress does not dare answer. He knows Red Alert has security measures in place that Fortress doesn't have access to. More cameras? Microphones? If he can't even trust his own optics not to betray him, what _can_ he trust? 

Eventually Rung chuckles and falls silent, hanging from his restraints with his mouth closed in a hard line as he swallows back the ebb and flow of _pain_. Fortress tries not to let the guilt leak through.

With each day that passes without the examiners discovering anything about Rung's function or form, Fortress's ability to stomach any of this shrivels. Two million years, they say. What could possibly worth torturing someone for this long?

But they keep doing it. Sometimes Fortress is called to escort Rung down into the examination chamber and gets to see them start their work. The scientists who oversee most of the procedures rarely get involved in the hands-on work - instead, they monitor any number of vital signs and analyze samples, murmuring to each other while the examiners vivisect Rung. 

He quickly learns where the closest washracks are located, and how to turn his head to the side and offline his optics before emptying his tanks. 

His life is an endless cycle of recharging, refueling, and standing guard. On rare occasions, he is called to stand guard in another area of Evaluation. _This is what he was born for,_ and it makes him sick.

Meeting with Resonance is the only thing that stops him from thinking he's defective. That something is glitched in his processor, and that he should listen to the preprogrammed diagnostic that suggests he report to medical if this goes on much longer. Resonance grasps his hand whenever they meet in the corridor and starts with basic glyphs, repeating them until Fortress can sign his own responses back. Then they begin to introduce him to motions that don't correspond with Neocybex glyphs. It's easier to communicate [quiet] by enclosing all of his fingers with theirs than it would be to spell the whole word out. It's _safer_ to stimulate the nervecircuits in one's fingers, palm, and wrists to communicate more complex ideas than it would be to say them out loud. 

Chirolinguistics, they call it. Speaking hand. Apparently, utilizing it fully requires the use of both hands - but using singular shorthand is less likely to draw unwanted attention. Non-essential physical and electromagnetic interaction between mechs is, in general, frowned upon. It's not forbidden. Not yet.

Two weeks in, Resonance pauses halfway to the dispensary. "Do you mind making a slight detour today? Or you can go on ahead of me. I need to check on something really quick," they say, their hand loose and still against his in case a spy bot drone happens to float by on patrol. Some of them are randomized, but Fortress has some awareness of their patrol routes, thanks to his security clearance. It helps keep anyone from capturing their hands on video.

Fortress stops, too. When Resonance tilts their head and turns down an unfamiliar hallway, he follows. "What do you need to check on?" he asks, curious. The two of them have a routine of visiting the dispensary to practice communicating freely, one which is usually only disrupted by the arrival of other mecha with careless optics. Having a logical, efficient routine - and sticking to it - is one of the easiest ways to avoid questioning. 

Resonance smiles up at him - the tightly controlled smile they reserve for when Fortress looks directly at their face. It is, they have assured him, nothing personal. "One of my fellow exemptions. He hasn't left his habsuite in a few days. He's still perfectly functional, I'm sure! I just want to make sure he hasn't gotten caught up in a project again. Always working so diligently!"

The sensory panels on their back - stripped down and exposed, thanks to the loss of their alt mode - ripple in what Fortress interprets as concern. Resonance folds their fingers together tightly for a moment. [They broke him again.]

[Broke?] Fortress signs in return. He's still slower than Resonance; chirolingual signs don't match spoken glyphs directly, and he often second-guesses the movement of his hands a few times before committing to it. 

Resonance shakes their head, muted, and stops before one of the habsuite doors. They tap on the door with a rap of their knuckles, rather than telling the security panel to announce their presence to whoever's inside the room. That is a quick and easy way to draw functionary attention to one's whereabouts. "Whirl?" they call softly, when no one responds to the knock. "Time to refuel."

The mech within doesn't answer. Minutes tick by. A spy bot hums along the main corridor, causing Fortress to tense as its blip on his internal map draws closer to them - but it turns away. He shifts his weight, standing guard as Resonance tries to coax the mech into answering. 

"I can open the door. I have the security clearance," Fortress points out, already knowing the answer.

Sure enough, Resonance shakes their head wildly, nearly knocking it against the door where they've pressed their audial sensor against it. [They would know.]

Then - "No need! I believe I hear him," they say aloud, their voice bright and full of irrepressible melody. They pull their head back from the door and beam at it, hands clapped together in anticipation. Fortress hears the muffled _clnk_ of footsteps through the door as someone draws near. "Wh-"

A heavy object cracks against the door with a metallic crash. Resonance startles, and Fortress instinctively yanks the flinching mech away, placing himself between them and the door as his integrated weapons activate. The force of the impact actually dented the metal outward and Fortress feels the cool clarity of combat mode carve through the usual muddle of conflicted emotions in his processor.

Behind the door, another distant clatter. But no one comes bursting through, as Fortress half-anticipates. After fumbling for a moment, Resonance manages to escape his protective grip and seizes his hand. "Not a good day," they say with a shaky laugh, and try to tug him away from the door.

Combat mode insists that Fortress break down the door himself and neutralize whatever volatile mech is inside. He forces his weaponry to retract with some difficulty while Resonance looks on. For a moment, he feels ashamed, and ducks his head to watch the floor while the guns transform back down into their sockets. 

[Broken? The medics wouldn't help him?] he asks, when he remembers how to use his fingers for something other than firing a trigger.

"No," Resonance says, without bothering to speak hand. They look as tired as Rung, for a moment; they scrub their face with their free hand once, then force their expression back into a brittle, terrible smile. "Come on! We don't want to waste time."

They tug Fortress back the way they came originally, humming to themselves, as if the entire incident is already forgotten. 

-

A member of the janitorial staff does a circuit of the vault while Fortress waits for Rung to be delivered from the latest round of examinations. The indigo blue mech whirrs around the room in circles in his alt mode, vacuuming up debris and polishing the floor beneath Rung's restraint cuffs with an extension that transforms out of his back. Never once does he look up to meet Fortress's watchful eyes; Fortress only knows his name is Sweep because of his HUD, and he only really remembers the mech's name because he's one of the few people in the Cog that has nothing in his risk assessment file. So far as security is concerned, the janitorial class are the most boring, non-threatening mechs on the planet. After he swabs the energon-stained inside of the cuffs clean and dusts the panels of the wall, the janitor trundles out without a word.

Not that Fortress has tried to engage him in conversation. He doesn't know what he would say. His ability to freely speak with other mechs began and ended in the fleeting period between him thawing on the slab and gazing down at Rung's deconstructed arm in the examination chamber. The Fortress who could have woken up and obeyed his programming and his orders to guard Rung as an object without question, dedicated and unyielding, isn't someone he thinks he wants to be.

They bring Rung back unconscious - not an uncommon sight. Raw, raised silver weld marks stand out along the chipped paint of his chest, framing the tinted circle over his spark chamber. His ventilations are ragged and wet, like they've left fluid in his systems. It takes a long time for his optics to come back online - long enough that Fortress starts to count between his vents, worried that they could stop at any moment.

Eventually, Rung rouses. One of his optics looks dimmer than the other. Fortress can't keep himself from asking, any thoughts of cameras and microphones set aside. "Why do the medics not treat you?"

It earns him a weary smile. But then, all of Rung's smiles seem to be weary. "You've been quiet," Rung says. He pauses to cough once more, and dark pink spots his mouth. "As I have heard, after so many evaluations, the examiners could take me apart and put me back together in their sleep. There's little point in involving medics who don't know my frame half so well as they do."

Fortress finds his gaze drawn inexorably to the energon trickling slowly from Rung's mouth and throat vents. His body only feels distant and dizzy for a moment before a sharp kernel of emotion anchors him in place. He grits his teeth to swallow down the hard lump of angry disbelief. "Even when they leave the job unfinished," he says, flatly. 

"Oh, no. I believe the job is finished exactly as intended," Rung says. Casually, as though he's resigned to this. "They are investigating the results of prolonged pain and stress on my frame. To see if there is an involuntary reaction. The time between examinations is being used effectively."

Rung isn't as good an actor as Resonance; [effectively] sounds like a curse word when he says it, acidic enough to eat through metal. 

Fortress turns his head away so abruptly that he scrapes his own audial against the wall. "I can't imagine what kind of tests can still be run on someone after so many years. I suppose that is why I am a guard, and not an examiner," he tells the wall. Red Alert's strict protocols insist that he keep his guard up and his optics on the prisoner at all times, but Fortress - can't. Something is burning inside him.

"They are quite creative, in the most unfortunate ways." Then Rung's voice modulates, loses some of that acidic bite, until he just sounds tired again. Tired and soothing, at the same time. "Enough about me. How have you been, Fortress?" he asks, before another wet retch wracks his body.

After waiting for Rung to stop coughing - the staccato sounds strike Fortress's ears with percussive force - he tells the wall, "I am functioning." A default answer. 

Rung's voice softens even more. Fortress doesn't know how he can sound like that, when _pain_ is a constant pulse around them, when Fortress can just barely make out the faint sound of Rung's internals grating against each other every time he coughs. "It's not enough to function. Are you well? Are you happy?"

How is he supposed to answer that?

"I function."

The unbearable softness eases away, after a moment. Fortress can't look at him. "I understand. I like to think it is better to function than - well. The alternative," Rung says, thoughtful and sad and heavy with exhaustion. "That one day things will be better."

-

If this is how Rung subverts mechs, Fortress suspects that he might already be a liability. 

-

He's almost to Resonance's door when a warning pings him. [Error - hardware failure detected in drone C2065] scrolls down his field of vision. The indicator for the nearest spy bot roaming this corridor has turned into a red blip on his internal map. Fortress rarely dismisses the map, these days; he feels much more secure when he has an idea of where all the most obvious cameras are.

Repairing damaged drones isn't part of his function, as he knows it, and within seconds the warning dismisses itself with a note that a functionary is on the way to investigate. Fortress is about to put the incident out of his mind when he walks around the corner, and nearly trips over someone. Slag - he's trying to be better about that. 

It's easy to forget, sometimes, that Fortress's inner turmoil all takes place in his processor. He feels like a fraud: an impostor in a security guard's frame. When everyone except Resonance looks at him, all they see is the imposing armor and authority of a member of the security guard class. Usually exempt mechs veer away from him like he's infested with scraplets.

But the rust-orange mech he almost rams into with his knee sits crouched on the floor, his shoulders hunched up, which explains how Fortress overlooked him. "Frag," the mech mutters to himself, repeating it emphatically as he prods the broken spy bot with pair of claws. As Fortress narrowly avoids kneeing him in the helm, the mech flinches and looks up from the bot with a single, wide blue optic over what little remains of a maskplate. He clutches his claws against his chest as he scrambles to his feet. "Oh, _frag._ "

On the floor, the drone spits a sad cloud of sparks. Half of its outer plating hangs askew, and the camera is cracked in two. Fortress looks from the broken drone to the empuratee, then back again. "Were you the one who damaged this?" Fortress asks, his voice grave, a sinking sensation in his tanks. He doesn't know what the consequences are for someone deliberately damaging Council property, let alone part of their surveillance cadre. For someone who has already lost the Council-given privilege of his face and hands...

The empuratee cringes at the seriousness in Fortress's tone. Belatedly, Fortress realizes he might be looming over the mech, his face etched with serious concern, and backs off a step. Damus, according to his HUD - with a risk assessment profile twice the length of Resonance's. Unlike Resonance, Damus still has his alt mode intact, but Fortress towers over everyone if he's not careful. 

Damus starts to explain in a rush, one of his claws digging into the paint of the other like he can't feel the pain. Empuratee claws tend to have weak, substandard sensors. "I was told to wait for someone here, and it ran into me, and now -" he babbles, gesturing down at the drone. His optic is bright with panic. Then he shudders and sighs heavily through his vents. "This...isn't the first time. This _always_ happens..."

Huh. Quickly, Fortress scans through the risk assessment. Normally he ignores it, since reading through Rung's and Resonance's in full only led to nausea and confusion. But the top line of Damus's profile reads, in very, very large text, [OUTLIER: Disrupts operation of machinery via spontaneous glitching] which explains a lot. If it's a known factor, then surely...

Right underneath that. [Known political dissident: vandalism of Council property].

"Someone is on their way to repair it," is all he says, after a pause. 

Damus stares at him warily, his frame tense, as though he expects Fortress to clap him in cuffs and drag him off to the nearest security lockup. Fortress looks around awkwardly, his posture stiff as he starts to edge away. If someone _is_ supposed to arrest Damus for the possibly-accidentally, possibly-on-purpose damage to the drone, Fortress doesn't know whether he qualifies. He certainly doesn't _want_ to. 

Thankfully, Resonance steps out of their room just down the hall before he has to make some kind of judgement call. Their visor turns from side to side before spying the two of them. "Oh good! You're both here!" they say as they wave at Fortress and Damus cheerfully. They bound up to Damus with a skip in their step, and unerringly punt the damaged drone down the hall with a flourish of their toe. "Fortress, Damus. Glitch, Fortress Maximus. Glitch is a new exemption," Resonance says, their smile positively radiant as the drone rolls away and leaves a trail of nuts and bolts in its wake.

"Not really," Damus mumbles. It's an impressive feat, for someone who has undergone empurata - the majority of the empuratees that Fortress has overheard don't have that kind of vocal range and flexibility. They can lower or raise their volume, but not much else. The empuratee eyes Fortress, still wary. 

Fortress can't blame him. "Good to meet you," he says, inclining his head.

"You've got your serious face on, still," Resonance tells him, tapping the side of their mouth. "Is it alright with you if Glitch comes with us to refuel?"

Fortress tries to relax his expression, but 'stiff stoicism' is his default anywhere outside his habsuite. Anywhere he could be watched. Resonance reaches out to tangle their fingers with his while Fortress contorts his face in a futile attempt to find something less stern, then casually loops their other hand through the prongs of Damus's claw. 

Damus wrenches his claw away with a hiss. "D-don't touch me. Please," he says, tersely, the finials on either side of his helm clamping down tight.

Resonance goes perfectly still, their hand frozen for a moment before they retract it with a laugh. "Right. Sorry. Should have asked," they say. Their fingers tighten in Fortress's hand, but sign nothing.

Fortress wonders how well empurata claws can interpret the nervecircuit signals of more advanced chirolinguistics. He's seen hundreds of empuratees in the Cog. A disproportionate amount make up the ranks of the high-risk exemption population. He never stopped to consider that, without their hands -

Cold trickles through his chest at the thought. Speaking hand is the only way Resonance knows to speak freely. Comm channels are monitored. Cameras and listening devices are everywhere. Short of exchanging cables with someone, there's almost no other way to communicate with someone without the Council knowing it. The Cog is one of the most heavily surveilled facilities on Cybertron. 

No further security alerts go out as Fortress accompanies Resonance and a tense Damus to the dispensary; the blip on the map that is the damaged drone vanishes when a functionary retrieves it. With any luck, that means that the damage is accounted for, thanks to Damus's exemption. "You're not really new? Or you're not really an exemption?" Fortress asks Damus, after a stretch of conversation filled with Resonance's usual cover chatter. 

A few other exempt mechs sit scattered around the room, occasionally in pairs; none of them ever approach Resonance's table when Fortress is with them. Damus shifts uncomfortably in his chair and glances around at the others before narrowing his optic at Fortress again, like he suspects it's a trick question. He aligns his claw very carefully as he attempts to pick up the cube of energon. Thanks to the angle of his claw joint, he can't seem to hold it very well. It slides out of his grasp twice when he closes the claws. "I'm being re-evaluated. Something's wrong with m-" 

His claw spasms and pinches shut too quick on the cube, sending it clattering away, and his optic darkens with frustration. Damus clenches the claw shut for a long moment, ventilating very carefully, before dragging the cube back toward him. "Something's different. It's changed," he finishes, darkly. His vestigial maskplate parts, and instead of trying to pick the energon up, he lowers his proboscis to the cube.

"The Council will get you sorted. They always know best," Resonance says, utterly confident, for the benefit of whoever is listening. Damus says nothing to contradict them, though Fortress senses a crackle of dull _rage_ on the edge of his EM field. Hearing Resonance repeat lines straight out of the latest propaganda mood prompts always makes Fortress shudder internally. But it's good practice for keeping his reactions to himself.

Damus takes off before Fortress finishes; the empuratee folds his claws in close to his chest before slipping past another mech on their way into the room. Then, as they have done each day for the past week, Resonance returns to the energon dispenser and draws another ration, their golden visor innocently fixed on the wall. It's a meaningless gesture - energon is too closely monitored for this to be overlooked - but two roaming spy drones catch them and Fortress on camera as they make their way to Whirl's door. "Whirl! Brought you fuel!" Resonance calls. 

Fortress hasn't offered to override the door since the first time. He has a better idea of what kind of danger that would put Whirl in, now. The safest way for exemptions to _stay_ exempt is for them to keep their heads down, and not draw unnecessary attention to themselves. Fortress tunes all of his audial sensors to their highest setting, though, on the alert for any sign of movement beyond the door. Most days, all he can make out is a faint voice, muttering to itself; sometimes the quiet click of metal on metal, like someone is using tools on the other side. When Whirl's in one of his worst moods, he throws whatever furniture he has at the door - which is never pleasant to hear, when Fortress has his sensors turned up. He grits his teeth and bears it. 

Today, however, Whirl answers right away. "I don't need it," comes from the other side of the door, in a voice sounds roughly like a piece of scrap metal tossed into an industrial sized blender. 

It's so unexpected that Fortress twitches; Resonance yelps and scrambles to keep from dropping the fuel. Whirl must be right behind the door to sound that close. 

Resonance shakes their head to regain their bearings. "Whirl, please. You can't have refueled in the past week," they insist, shaking the energon cube temptingly at the door.

Fortress detects movement and reacts before he finishes processing it. He seizes Resonance around the waist and hauls them away -

Just in time for Whirl to kick the door down in a _screech_ of bending metal. Fuel slops over the edges of the cube as Fortress and Resonance stand there, frozen. Whirl storms through the doorway, hostility radiating off him like heat from a smelter. "And who the frag do you think you are?!" the mech demands, irritably, his single optic glaring up and down Fortress's frame like his presence personally offends him. 

He could guess that the mech behind the door was strong from the way that he casually dented the door to drive them away. But in person, Whirl is built like - like an ex-member of the Aerial Corps, according to Fortress's HUD and its rapid tactical calculations. Not as tall and nowhere near as broad as Fortress, yet built to take a hit and keep hitting back. They've disarmed and removed any integrated weapons he might've had, but he still moves like someone on the edge of violence.

Resonance's vocalizer emits a tiny squeak. They hold out the energon ration as far as they can. Fortress fights back the urge to smack their arm away from the danger zone.

Whirl squints at the cube, his helicopter blades flaring and resettling against his back. Fortress calculates just how fast he can sprint down the hallway with a civilian under one arm. 

Then Whirl reaches out and wraps his fingers around the energon cube, his EM field full of sour gratitude. "I don't have time for this," he says, waving the cube at them menacingly. He stoops, picks up the bent remains of his door, and steps back inside the room. With a grunt, he wedges the door back into the frame behind him. Fortress can still see through the gaps.

Whirl sticks his helm through one of the spaces and narrows his optic. His EM field turns mild so abruptly that it gives Fortress whiplash. "Goodbye now!" he says, sing-song.

Then he withdraws his head and vanishes into the dark. Fortress hears the clank of his footsteps very clearly, now that there are gaping holes where the door doesn't fit into the frame. 

"It's good to see he's feeling better!" Resonance says, after resetting their vocalizer.


	3. Chapter 3

He continues to speak with Rung, careful to always fall silent an hour before he's due to change out with Red Alert - the other security guard often arrives early and lurks outside the vault door, irritable and suspicious of Fortress's every move. Another week passes - another week of watching the examiners pull Rung down and bring him back - sometimes intact, sometimes not, but always in pain -

Fortress doesn't know what to do. He stands guard, and feels hollow. On some days, Rung is too exhausted to do more than hang there in silence; Fortress ventures close to ensure he's still alive, and realizes that every visible inch of Rung's paint is cracked and faded. Two million years of neglect, deconstruction, and reconstruction. 

When is the last time Rung walked on his own two feet, or refueled without the IV drip on the examination berth? His confinement is just as much a torture as the examinations themselves.

For the crime of existing. Fortress can't wrap his mind around it. He memorizes Rung's risk assessment profile after scanning it for the thirtieth time: it amounts to a list of all the things that he is not. All the functions that he doesn't have. Nothing that Fortress can actually parse as criminal behavior, no matter how hard he tries to see it from a Functionist perspective.

(Resonance wanted to sing. Whirl left the Corps to make watches. Damus was a student. It's all right there, in their files.)

He can't access medical supplies without leaving an electronic trail; he can't take Rung down to rest without tripping one of Red Alert's many, _many_ alarms. All Fortress can do is retreat to his wall and keep up his own faltering end of the conversation whenever...whenever Rung wants to talk. He can't afford to speak freely, his replies stilted and halting, but Rung fills the idle hours with his analysis of each of the Councilors' neuroses. Physician-patient confidentiality, he says with a bitter smile, only counts if they're actually his patients - and Rung is no longer a therapist. Two million years is long enough to have familiarized himself with the Enactor's slow-building religious delusions, the Auditor's unhealthy dynamic with the Curator, the tremor in the Inquisitor's needle-tipped fingers that may or may not be psychosomatic.

With each day that passes, he becomes more aware that it's not enough to just listen. But even if he took Rung down and tried to run, there's nowhere to go. He traces the furthest edges of his internal map over and over, and finds nothing. The urge to pace the outermost curves of the Cog seizes him sometimes, but his tanks sink at the thought of just how heavily guarded the edges of the facility must be. With everyone - _everyone_ \- serving as the Council's eyes, Fortress wandering alone along the perimeter would be noticed in a sparkbeat. 

Interim guard duty in the hub of Evaluation provides the most opportunity to take different routes back to his habsuite or Rung's cell; he takes halls that branch out away from the center of the Cog and sets his status to [on patrol] for anyone who might monitor such things. He never gets far before he comes across someone else - a functionary, another security guard - and is forced to retreat to familiar ground with his face frozen to hide the flush of guilt. 

They can't read his mind. Not from a distance. Not yet. Resonance whispers about shadowplay in chirolinguistics, their fingers hesitant as they skim over his, like they're afraid to put it into words. About the mnemosurgeons, and the way they unspool secrets from processors and leave empty shells behind. Needles through the neck, the optics, the open helm. About the faceless purple mech under Six-of-Twelve's command, one of the first and most notorious victims, whose EM field is a dead, cold, inert thing. No one knows how the Council decides who receives empurata, who receives shadowplay, or who suffers both. The exempt live in fear of slipping, and waking up as someone entirely different.

If they haven't already. If they just haven't noticed.

-

Oddly, Fortress first notices the flathead not on one of his cautious recon missions, but on his usual route. He's back in the familiar, ornate halls around Rung's cell, on his way to stand guard, when quiet footsteps tip him off. Fortress ducks his head to the side automatically - he never makes real eye contact with anyone, these days - as the grey-and-yellow mech walks passed him. Dominus Ambus. The mech holds himself with perfect, straight-backed posture, his flatscreen fixed forward. The red recording light of the camera mounted on the side of his screen never turns. 

Strange. Fortress hasn't met many other flatheads - one or two, at the most. He can't recall any of them having a separately mounted camera. Does the Council have cameras embedded in their screens instead?

Once he pays attention, he realizes that he passes Dominus with alarming regularity in the halls of Evaluation. It _must_ be Dominus; the only other flathead he notices has black and red armor plating, and almost never leaves the heart of the sector. Dominus...wanders. Fortress does not know what schedule examiners follow. Yet somehow, he sees Dominus more frequently in the corridors, walking in a patient circuit from one end of the sector to the other, than he does around an examination berth. 

He doesn't know what to make of it. He straightens his own back struts until they ache whenever Dominus comes into sight, and tries to put the strangeness out of mind. 

-

Another week passes, and abruptly, everything changes. 

Fortress has almost grown used to the horrifying routine, inured to the constant anxiety of being watched; he can stand long hours on temporary guard duty in the hub of Evaluation without excusing himself to empty his tanks. Every so often the Evaluator will call him up to the platform and cross-examine him on Rung's nature - Fortress never has any new answers. Sometimes, the panic grows slowly, without him noticing, and he leaves in a haze, the world too-bright and sharp-edged whenever he brushes against it, and Rung has to coax him back into his reeling frame with a quiet stream of words. Half of the words enter his audials but slide right out of his processor in a blurred, half-remembered stream, but it helps. 

He's on a short rotation in the hub when the alert goes out. The Evaluator snaps an order at his aides on the platform - Fortress flinches internally, as he always does when the Councilor moves - and three other security guards in close proximity to the Councilor jerk to attention and leave their post at the Evaluator's summons. Belatedly, Fortress hurries to join them. The Evaluator sweeps off the platform, the metal glyphs embroidered in his cloak flashing as he stalks toward the door that leads toward the core of the Cog. 

One of the aides pinged Fortress and the other three guards to accompany the Councilor. Some kind of emergency? Fortress wishes they hadn't chosen him: the Evaluator's optic is a furious, burning crimson, and fury boils in the wash of his EM field. The Councilor curtails the vortex of emotion with ruthless efficiency, but the echo of it scalds Fortress's field, and he tenses as they march toward the center. Toward Rung's vault.

They turn away. The phalanx of aides halves in an instant, then again, until only twelve remain connected to the Evaluator. Fortress glances around as much as he dares without turning his head as they march through the tight spiral of the corridors - they wind deeper than Rung's cell, closer to the center than Fortress has ever ventured before. 

A second Councilor joins them so smoothly that Fortress almost leaps out of his armor when the second, silvery cloak flares out. They are a saturated yellow and blue, the yellow so deep it's almost orange, with a set of two rings cresting their helm that the Evaluator lacks. 

"Twelve-of-Twelve is already on-site," the Enactor says. Their voice is clear and confident, modulated to sound deceptively smooth; not at all what Fortress expected to hear. "While your surveillance team successfully identified the useless scum who participated in the riot, it would appear that some of their obsolescence chips malfunctioned upon activation."

'Useless' and 'scum' are some of the foulest words in the Cog. Six-of-Twelve says them so casually.

"A _complete_ malfunction?" the Evaluator demands, sharply. The prickling fury bubbling within him stands out more starkly next to the poised, unshaken assurance of the Enactor.

"They survived the backup chip, yes. Curious, isn't it." The two guards who came with the second Councilor fall into place, their golden visors and frowns unreadable. Ahead of them, a doorway opens soundlessly at a wave from the Enactor's fingers to reveal an elevator. Fortress winds up clustered against the back wall, claustrophobic and penned in on all sides by aides and guards and functionaries in addition to the Councilors. "Ironbinder was most zealous in capturing them, regardless, but Twelve is...displeased. Three and Nine should be on standby when we return."

Return from where?

The elevator opens onto a wide, expansive room that takes up the entire floor as far as Fortress can see. It doesn't appear on Fortress's internal map. As far as he was concerned not a moment ago, the Cog appeared to be _almost_ a perfect sphere, with flattened edges on the top and the bottom. This layer rounds out part of the missing slices. 

Except that it doesn't. Fortress tries to update the internal map manually, but this entire sector remains an impassive blank. 

Pristine mechs in the Enactor's blue and yellow move briskly across the wide, open space between transport shuttles. The Enactor and the Evaluator walk up the ramp in unison and the guards - and Fortress, bewildered - file in. 

He doesn't realize they're _leaving_ until a section of the furthest wall slides open, and the shuttle's engines fire. The two Councilors stand at the forward end of the ship, communicating in a flurry of murmured comms, and Fortress stares past their intimidating figures at the view through the window as the shuttle leaves the floating Cog behind. 

Without walls and endless corridors and rooms in the way, the world is so huge. The sky is a dull blue, lit from below by the warm yellow of tall skyscrapers. The current time - 01:32 of morning shift - ticks by in mech-sized digits on multiple screens set into the side of buildings and on floating advertisement boards. Apart from the omnipresent glow of the giant screens that light the streets and airways, most of the buildings are plain, utilitarian in form, with unadorned outer walkways and entrances on multiple floors to accommodate fliers.

Fortress notes, with stifled unease, that there are very few fliers at all. In fact, the shuttle they're in is one of the only vehicles on the main airway over the city. Larger versions of the roving spy bots from the halls of the Cog dot the air, their bodies a boxy camera with simple claws. Sky-spies, monitoring the city and all its strata from above. All the billboards flash the same slogans and mood prompts that play across flathead screens, in glyphs large enough to be seen from halfway across the skyline: [Form is Function.] [Take pride in being a means to an end.]

They pass through a blockade to land on one of the main streets of a commercial stratum - _too empty for this time of day,_ Fortress thinks, with terrifying certainty - and disembark. Yet another Councilor waits for them as the transport extends its ramp, whirling and prowling in impatient circles as the Enactor and the Evaluator exit the vehicle. 

Twelve-of-twelve. The Castigator. 

His enforcers stand in strict ranks: some flank him, while others stand behind a line of prisoners on their knees, weapons trained on their backs. Some of the enforcers sport flatscreen helms - more than Fortress has ever seen in one place, before. With an internal shiver, Fortress stays in line with another guard beside the Evaluator. Of the three Councilors, only the Enactor's optic remains a neutral gold; the Castigator and the Evaluator both seethe with poorly-concealed disgust as they observe the prisoners. 

Someone gouged the prisoners' optics out. A few of their sockets leak sparks and cleanser fluid from broken lines onto their bent knees. Fortress resets his own eyes, unsettled. 

A muted grey mech, his torso and arms lined with green, breaks away from the line of Enforcers. Another mech follows him, but something in the way the first one moves instantly puts Fortress on edge - the mech has a predatory edge to his faint smile. He inclines his head to the Evaluator, a surprisingly casual gesture, his fan-like wing panels loose and relaxed. Fortress doesn't think he's ever seen another mech so absently calm in the presence of one of the twelve most powerful people on Cybertron, let alone three of them. 

And it frightens him.

His presence seems to temper the Evaluator's radiating anger - barely. "Ironbinder. They have not attempted to contact the rest of their cell?" the Councilor asks, resting a hand on Ironbinder's shoulder.

The name. There's something wrong with it. It's missing the sub-glyph indicating whether it's a name or not: it leaves a blank, discordant skip in the word when spoken aloud. 

Ironbinder cocks his head to the side, perfectly at ease in the Evaluator's grip. Leans into it, even. "Not that I or Soundwave have detected. And Soundwave knows better than to omit details from me now," he says, with a mirthless smile that touches only half his face. He gestures with a claw-tipped finger, and the mech who left the group of enforcers with him jerks like he's been physically struck. An empuratee, with some sort of bird-shaped drone perched on one shoulder. A former servant of the Senate with outlier abilities and a domesticated mechanimal, the risk assessment informs Fortress. His single-optic gaze is glassy and unseeing as he stares into the distance. 

Fortress knows the feeling. 

With another unsettling jolt, he looks back at Ironbinder and realizes that his HUD has nothing to display for him. _Absolutely nothing_. No name, no serial number, no rank. It's like Ironbinder doesn't exist.

"Then let us see what there is to see," the Evaluator says, with a cool, eerie calm in his EM field. The transition happens so abruptly that Fortress is thrown for a loop. 

The Castigator snaps his fingers and one of the enforcers reaches down, roughly lifts one of the prisoners by the back of his neck, and drags the mech over to drop at the Evaluator's feet. With his arms magnetically cuffed behind his back, the prisoner can't catch himself before his face hits the road. Tiny shards of optic glass break off the edges of his optic socket. 

"No! No! Let me go -" he begs, hoarsely, before the Evaluator reaches down and cracks open his helm. It gives way so easily that Fortress has a brief moment of shock before the wave of nausea and horror slaps into him. Prying apart the metal layers with the practiced movements of someone who has dismantled a helm a thousand times before, the Evaluator clicks his vocalizer in disdain as he prods around the mech's processor chamber, removing the auxiliary processor layers to reach the core. His optic is an assessing shade of green, all fury set aside as he examines the prisoner's brain module. 

The mech continues to emit strangled, glitched noises from his vocalizer. His frame contorts in agony, twisted up so much that it could snap his spinal struts if he strains too much more or wrenches with his transformation cog in the wrong direction. Still awake. 

Fortress can't be far away. He can't afford to lose his sense of his frame in the fog and risk that old tremor in his arm freeing itself from his stiff control. But slag, he wishes he were anywhere but here. That they'd left him to guard Evaluation, blissfully unaware of the outside world. There's something fundamentally wrong about seeing a mech's brain module exposed to the open air - like Rung's thin arm turned inside out, like someone else watching through his own optics when he looks in a mirror.

"Your verdict, Ten?" the Enactor asks, with an absent, unbothered tone. As though this is nothing new. Ironbinder inspects the tips of his claws, equally unconcerned as the Evaluator - evaluates.

"Yes, they have deactivated the obsolescence chips, and -" With a quick snip of a knife that transforms out from the Evaluator's thumb, he severs one of the main lines connecting the prisoner's processor to the inner armor and lifts the brain module up to inspect something else. A choked screech cuts off in the prisoner's throat. Static throbs in Fortress's head. 

The Evaluator stops. He turns the brain module over again, and the prisoner's foot spasms. "- well. Well, well, well," the Councilor murmurs, with another click, and draws a handheld device from a subspace compartment in his arm. UV light pours over the brain module, highlighting every etched circuit and turning the processor chamber a sickly violet. 

Then, with a deft twist of the knife, the Evaluator plucks the mech's brain module all the way free and steps away. The prisoner drops like a rock, his armor slack, like all his joints have been removed. The Evaluator tucks the UV light away, the brain module casually held in his hand as he turns back to the Councilors. "Contact Two. Three may authenticate my evaluation, but this is mnemosurgical work," he informs them, his optic a grim orange.

Fortress can't stop staring at the body. His HUD still reads it as alive - the spark keeps burning long after mere processor death. But without the processor to regulate it - 

"Impossible," the Castigator hisses, his anger unassuaged. His optic glares at the remaining prisoners, who have all curled up in horror.

The Evaluator rolls the brain module in his hand and shakes his head. Behind him, the enforcer aims his integrated gun at the prisoner's chest. "Yet the signs are unmistakable. Trepan has a breach in his ranks. An audit may be in order."

A whine, and then a _thump_ as the gun fires. One of the other prisoners sobs.

With a snarl, the Castigator strides forward and hauls the sobbing prisoner onto their feet. "This one, for you and Three to confirm your results," he says, a cruel edge to his field, and shoves the prisoner to the waiting hands of the security guard beside Fortress. Then he turns with a snap of his cloak, gesturing to the enforcers. "Terminate the redundant ones. Take the rest to Recycling. If they refuse to be useful in life, they can be useful in death."

The enforcers comply. Ironbinder snaps his claws to draw Soundwave's attention, and after a silent comm - Fortress can't even sense its passage, thanks to Ironbinder's strangeness - the domesticated drone wings away from the empuratee's shoulder and flies up to join the spy bots patrolling overhead. Fortress watches her go. His optics ache; his whole head aches. There's a tightness in his torso, and his ventilations feel strained in a way that actually pings his processor with a medical warning.

Meanwhile, the Enactor walks out into the middle of the street, heedless of the prisoners being shot and arrested behind them. When the drone disappears behind the edge of a building, Fortress looks at them instead, numb and nauseous at the same time. The Councilor raises their optic to survey the strata around them: the strangely empty streets and airways, cleared so that the Councilors could do their business in peace. As the scent of melted metal and guttering sparks and scorched energon start to suffocate Fortress, the Enactor lifts their arm and -

Fortress frowns. There is some device attached to the Enactor's wrist, one that none of the other Councilors bear. Part of it looks like some polished mineral, blue with a band of bright gold running along the curve, with a digital readout in the center. 

"Six?" the Evaluator asks. Through the fog, Fortress flinches at how close the Councilor sounds. His body is moving on autopilot as the Evaluator and the guards and aides start back toward the shuttle.

The Enactor gestures with their fingers and turns something on the device. The screen flickers. With a satisfied noise, they sweep around to rejoin the group. Waving their hand, they say, "Another hour of joyful employment. The street should remain clear until you've finished cleaning up, Twelve. Plenty of time."

"New watch?" the Castigator replies caustically, irritation at being distracted from the work of shooting a dozen prisoners in the head radiating from him. Fortress shakes his head, trying to clear it. 

The Enactor is serene. "Please have the functionaries keep me appraised," he tells the Evaluator, coldly ignoring the Castigator's odd question. "If the populace begins to take note of the network time protocol alterations, we can adjust accordingly."

Only then does Fortress think to ping his internal chronometer. 00:32, it informs him. No errors detected. 

But that's - not right -

Fortress stares at every billboard screen they fly past on their way back to the cog. 00:32 glows back, in perfect sync with his own. All of it based on Cybertronian Standard Time.

But it was already, impossibly 01:32, earlier. He _remembers_. It's etched into his memory with perfect clarity, that first sight of the city outside the Cog.

The watch on the Enactor's wrist gleams, wrapped around his arm with an elegant twist of metal, and Fortress can't look away.

-

(He memorizes the turns as they make their way back to Evaluation, and stores it in the same file as his memory of the time.)

-

He's unsteady on his feet as he makes his way up to Rung's cell. Fortress feels exhausted, strung out like metal that's been forged too thin. The ache persists in his head, so sharp that not even the foggy distance can cushion it for him. More than anything, he wants to lay down where the light can't reach his aching optics; he wants to transform and tear through the walls until he can see the sky and the traitorous clocks again; he wants - he wants - 

The door to the vault opens, and Fortress jolts when he hears Red Alert's voice. "...isk it," the other guard is muttering, and does Fortress even have a shift this hour? He rapidly snaps back to himself, running through the schedule frantically - he came here without thinking, came here because he wanted _to see Rung_ , without considering the consequences or what Red Alert might say -

His shift started ten minutes ago; there is a functionary addendum on the schedule, though, marking that he was on another assignment and shuffling the start time. Relief leaves Fortress limp on the inside. "Here to relieve you, Red Alert," he says, once his vocalizer resets. He's early, but not out of place.

Red Alert jerks, his fist slamming backward into the wall in some kind of reflexive, glitched movement; Fortress flinches. "Where have you been? You're ten minutes late!" Red Alert demands, his optics wild as he stares at Fortress, like he expects to see [traitor] branded on his chest.

From the center of the room, Fortress senses Rung's quiet gaze on him. He holds his hands up, trying to appease Red Alert's suspicion. "I was called to escort the Evaluator. It is noted on the schedule. We only just returned to the Cog."

And Red Alert stiffens. His glower shifts; knowing glints in his optics. "So that's how it is," he says, his voice tight. He strides over to Fortress and pokes him hard in the chest. "Listen up. If you try to sabotage this guard rotation, I won't hesitate to report you."

Fortress thought they were past this, but Red Alert's suspicious nature seems to have returned in full force. "I would never -"

Red Alert hauls Fortress around by the armor of his collar, his grip vicious as he backs Fortress up into the room until he's up against the wall. Over the shorter mech's helm, Rung looks on, his expression full of concern as he meets Fortress's eyes. "They never stop listening. We are their eyes," Red Alert says, relentless, looking at him like he can see right through Fortress's mask. 

Then he shoves away from Fortress, his expression ugly. "And _everyone_ is a suspect. _Constant vigilance,_ " he finishes, tapping the side of his helm.

Fortress does the only thing he can do. He salutes Red Alert, his ventilation system screaming a warning at the effort it takes to hold himself perfectly still. "Yes sir." A thin whine fills his audials, from somewhere far away -

Red Alert spins around with another growl. "And you! I thought I told you that all janitorial staff need to identify themselves and sign in before wandering in here -" he yells at the janitor who just rolled into the vault in his alt mode, ready to vacuum. The thin whine cuts off as the janitor - Sweep, as usual - transforms, head ducked and cringing as Red Alert berates him all the way out the door. The vault shuts behind them.

Fortress feels himself listing to the side. He relaxes his stalled ventilation system and sags back against the wall, one shoulder lower than the other as he breathes. 

"Even after all this time...sometimes I still wish I could help more," Rung says, unprompted. He sounds unfathomably, endlessly sad.

Blearily, Fortress lifts his head, his system slowly bleeding out the heat of the panic that built up over the past few minutes. "What do you mean?" he croaks - he needs to reset his vocalizer again. 

Rung sighs. His legs are trembling in their restraints today. Fortress can't make out where the damage is. "Once, I would have told you that Red Alert suffers from a crippling mix of paranoia and anxiety. It's causing him a great deal of distress. I don't believe he trusts anyone in this entire facility not to betray him."

"And now?" Fortress asks. He tilts his helm back, trying to ease the tension knotted at the base of his neck. The ceiling is always a safe place to point his optics at. 

"Well, I suppose it's not paranoia if they really are -"

The schedule shows nothing for the next four hours. Yet the door irises open, barely contained _anger_ flooding in, and Fortress straightens in a rush as the Evaluator stalks inside. He catches a brief glimpse of Red Alert and Sweep, frozen where they were sidelined by the Councilor's arrival - then his gaze shoots to Rung involuntarily, quick enough to catch a glimpse of the bleak, sinking resignation on the mech's face. 

"Councilor!" Fortress says, his salute stilted. At least, he thinks, watching at the Evaluator's clenched fists, he doesn't have the brain module anymore. 

Only two examiners have come with him. At the Evaluator's snapped command, they rush over to Rung. "Prepare the object for transport," he says, disregarding Fortress entirely. 

They only just returned from that trip to the outside world. Moreover, the Evaluator almost _never_ comes to retrieve Rung in person; Fortress can count on one hand the number of times he has seen the Evaluator in this section of the Cog. This examination seems to be completely off schedule, and overwhelming press of the Councilor's anger sends a thread of fear through Fortress's spark. 

Rung rolls his head up as they unclamp his neck. "Another session?" he asks, heavily. "Knowing what I turn into won't bring you peace."

The Evaluator crosses the room in two strides and stoops to seize Rung by the throat. He lifts him effortlessly, so that Rung's feet dangle meters above the ground. The examiners scramble out of the way, alarm on their faces, and Fortress realizes that it really is just the Evaluator. None of his aides are plugged into him; he's alone. 

And coldly, cruelly furious. 

"Do you know how often we have debated the merits of dismantling you, and _leaving you like that_? Of stringing all your components up for everyone - all the useless out there who hail the Useless One - and showing them what you are truly made of?" the Evaluator asks, tightening his grip as he speaks, until the metal squeals. Fortress slams down the urge to break away from the wall and - do something. _Anything_. He needs to prot-

Rung laughs in the Evaluator's face. Fortress flinches back, aghast. "I'm sensing a great deal of not-very-repressed rage in you. Would you like my professional opinion?" Rung asks, his voice strained under the pressure on his vocalizer. The smile quirking his mouth doesn't have even a trace of exhaustion - his optics glint with sardonic laughter.

The Evaluator is perfectly, terrifyingly still. "You have no profession, and no right to an opinion," he says, in the same voice he might have used to order an execution.

"Ah, well," Rung says, nodding. "Thank Froid for defense mechanisms, because I shudder to think of what the world would be like if you took out all your issues on it, instead of just me." 

A pause. "Oh, wait."

The Evaluator slams Rung face first into the floor. A chunk of metal and glass cracks off and skids out from under Rung, ricocheting off the wall to land in a corner. Something in Fortress's chest punches through him, like he's been shot. 

"I do not care about peace," the Evaluator informs Rung's half-crushed helm.  


When they leave, Fortress slides down the wall, sits, and stares at broken pieces of Rung's glasses where they lay in the corner, until Sweep returns to quietly clear the floor. Fortress staggers upright and retrieves the glasses before the janitor can, and then stumbles out.


	4. Chapter 4

Three days pass. 

The schedule in Fortress's HUD fills in with a solid block of time that merely reads 'examination.'

And as time trickles by, with no sign of Rung's return, Fortress feels colder and colder - and more like a coward. Because he could go down there to that examination chamber reserved for Rung, to check if he's still alive, but he can't bear to see it. He stores Rung's glasses in one of his shoulder compartments, the sense of failure churning in his tanks until he can barely keep a quarter of an energon ration down. One of the lenses is cracked, the other shattered. He has no way to repair them that wouldn't raise questions, unless he asks Resonance. But Fortress never told them what he guards, day after day - even speaking hand seemed like too much of a risk. Rung is one of the most heavily classified people in the Cog, and so Fortress never used his name around them for fear of one day slipping up. So far as Resonance is concerned, he is just one of many security guards that rotate through the facility.

He only has one person here he can trust, who he can speak freely to, and they're one of the most vulnerable people in the Cog. 

He doesn't ask, but Resonance can clearly tell something is wrong. They nudge his energon cube closer to his hand while he sits in silence, trying not to vomit at the table, and trace queries into the palm of his hand. Fortress shakes his head, muted, and tops off Resonance and Damus's rations with what he can't finish. Resonance is small, but Damus less so, yet they both receive the same amount of energon each meal - it can't be enough. Fortress's own systems start to ping him after the second day, indicators flashing in the corner of his eye that tell him he needs to increase his daily fuel intake. 

A fuel shortage, Resonance told him once. Planet-wide. Cybertron's resources dry up a little more each day: no more hot spots, very little energon near the surface, and very few other galactic civilizations nearby willing to trade with them when they have so little to offer in return. It's one of the pretexts behind the Functionist Council's periodic recall of redundant and obsolete alt modes. Everything must be stripped of unnecessary components to maximize the efficiency of the resources they have left; everything that _can_ be _must_ be recycled to avoid waste. A sign from Primus that they need to carve off extraneous pieces until the Grand Machine achieves its final form.

The energon in his cube looks like it came straight from someone else's fuel lines. Like the stain that Fortress may or may not have imagined splattered across his foot, the shadow of pink splatter that wouldn't scrub off with solvent in the washracks.

On the third day, Damus arrives at the dispensary with fresh, unpainted armor welded around his throat - the mark of a recent surgery. Resonance supports him with a careful hand on his back; they wave off Fortress when he moves to help. Damus cringes at the sound of Fortress's voice when he asks what happened. "He damaged his vocalizer during the re-evaluation today, practicing his new function. So I'm going to help train him, once he has recovered," Resonance says, their voice as bright and sunny as always, that practiced pitch that comes from centuries of vocal training. 

"Don't w-nt to," Damus mumbles. His vocalizer crackles and pops, with occasionally blips of harsh static cutting him out. 

Resonance's hand clenches against his back. "Of course you do."

"-t's h-r-ific -"

Fortress fetches energon for all of them while Resonance helps Damus to a table. Other mecha watch the spectacle - the dispensary is busy at this time of day - but Fortress does his best to ignore them as he strides back to the table like a mech on a mission. Some of them avert their eyes when he walks past; one outright skitters out of his way. 

"-sh'd've just l-t me crush -t," Damus finishes, his frame crumpled in his seat. Resonance shoots Fortress a worried glance through their visor, palpable alarm edging their field. 

Fortress remains unsure of exactly what Damus's outlier ability does now. He's aware that it changed recently - drastically enough for Damus to be brought back for re-evaluation, so the Evaluator can determine where he can fulfill his function best. Until the examination is complete, his risk assessment profile simply reads 'pending.' Damus always clams up and turns sullen when Fortress asks, so he tries not to press for answers. Knowing what he knows about the Evaluator's methods of examination, he shudders. Unlike most of the exempt - too intimidated by Fortress's function to even speak in his presence - or Resonance, Damus is worryingly vocal about his unhappiness. 

Worse, it sounds as though Damus may have tried to sabotage his own vocalizer. Admitting something like that out loud, with so many mecha around to hear... "Your voice is part of your function now. You need to take care of yourself," Fortress says, as quietly as he can, and cautiously sets the cube of energon in front of Damus. 

Damus hunches up further still, and curls an arm around the energon. They've upgraded his vocalizer from empurata-standard twice now, but his hands still end in the same cumbersome claws. "C-n't do th-s for them -nymore."

Resonance speaks right over him deliberately, their voice pitched to match Damus's almost perfectly. The sound of the glyphs overlap so much that Fortress struggles to follow what each of them are saying. "Fortress is absolutely right. It will get better. You just need practice." Then, pressing a hand to their chest, Resonance pushes back from the table and stands on their seat. "Here, listen. You should know the Councilors' favorites," they say, cheerfully, drawing a ripple of attention from all over the room. "Eucryphia's Empyrean Suite. A celebration of the Citadel of Light."

And they sing. 

Fortress has never heard singing. It's...odd. Resonance hums occasionally, but they have never sung in front of Fortress before. The words are very strange and very old - his processor identifies them as Old Cybertronian allegory. They form fluid phrases that seem to have no relevance or context to the whole. [Invocation to Hymnia and Motere, together as Syncope]? [Primus and Vivere, in the core]? [Prima, toward the sky]? He counts at least five unfamiliar prefix glyphs that lead to long metaphorical tangents: they're labelled [obsolete] when he tries to look them up in his vocabulary files. The number of redundant synonyms used throughout is anathema to the Functional Neocybex that is Fortress's default language setting. Yet Resonance pronounces them without faltering, like liquid gold pouring from their lips, their hands moving in unfamiliar gestures to frame their spark.

It's beautiful. His spark pulses in time with the last, achingly keen note, and then Resonance ends it. They bow their head deeply in the silence that follows. Their EM field is full of quiet grace.

No one seems to know how to respond. An empuratee stands frozen in the doorway, caught in the middle of leaving. Another mech has its hand pressed to its maskplate, its optics blinking unevenly.

Across the table, Damus's single optic is streaming sparks. His field is utterly distraught. 

Then Resonance hops off the chair with a skip, and sits with another sweeping bow. "Well, the first movement anyway," they say; the switch back to plain old Functional Neocybex throws Fortress for a moment. "I don't think we have time for the full piece. Then there's the Hyperuranion Suite, of course - but we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves -"

Damus slams his claws against the table. The cube of energon spins off the surface and cracks open on the floor, fizzing. " _St-p it._ C-can't -"

He doesn't finish. Damus knocks his own chair down and bolts for the exit. He crashes into the empuratee in the doorway and sends the other mech staggering as he shoves past into the hallway.

Too late, almost as one, every mech in the room averts their optics. 

"Slag. He's going to get reported for that," Resonance says, quietly. Fortress notes that Resonance didn't say they'd be the ones reporting it. Their hands tremble against the table in a way that Fortress recognizes.

He takes their hand and squeezes until the trembling stops. [My records indicate that he received empurata for political dissent.]

Resonance gives him a tight smile. It takes visible effort for them not to look upset in front of the audience, for once, but they sign gratitude for the assistance. [They had him under the Castigator. His abilities allowed him to render non-sentient machinery inoperative with a touch. Too useful to discard just because he hates everything they stand for,] they sign back, after regaining their composure. The chirolingual movement for the Castigator sends a frisson of fear through Fortress's fingers.

[What exactly changed?]

They shake their head, and answer anyway. [Now he can use his voice to render _sentient_ machinery inoperative.] And while Fortress slowly, with mounting horror, processes the implications of that -  [Now, he's too valuable to ever allow him to leave. And all he has ever wanted is to leave.]

They sit together for a moment after that, their EM fields wrapped tightly enough not to interact with any of the other mechs in the room. Which is why Fortress notices when Resonance's field twists - not just sympathy and horror to match his own, but... 

[You're upset.]

Resonance bites their lip and offline their optics before smiling at him. [Time's running out.]

-

Resonance refuses to explain what they meant by it. They gossip out loud instead as Fortress walks them back to Whirl's room, where the reclusive mech reaches out through one of the still-unrepaired holes with scraped-up fingers to take his daily cube of fuel from Fortress's careful hand. Resonance repeats the Council-approved news for the rest of the trip back to their habsuite, and only sign [Be safe] before slipping their hand free to skip away. 

The bland chatter does nothing to ease Fortress's mind. He turns to begin the trek to his own habsuite, distracted as he turns Resonance's words over in his mind. Time's running out?

The only conclusions he can come to carve a cold, crawling pit in his chest.

A hand folds into his own. By habit, he allows it. There's a solid ten second delay before Fortress realizes the dimensions are entirely wrong for Resonance - the fingers similarly proportioned but larger, the joints molded for an unfamiliar make and model - and he nearly puts an elbow through the wall with the force of his recoil.

Dominus Ambus's flatscreen is just as unsettling now as it has ever been. More to the point, Fortress didn'thear the mech walk up to him; he couldn't have been _that_ distracted. 

His hand remains, steady, on Fortress's. His fingertips are oddly cold.

Fortress doesn't think he's ever seen the mech interact with anyone. It's not unusual to see Dominus making his inscrutable rounds through the halls of Evaluation, his screen cycling through mood prompts, with everyone giving him as wide a berth as possible. Some of the exempt empuratees actively turn around and walk the other way when they see him, as though the mere sight of him could lose them what little they have left. Flatheads are rare and new enough that no one's grown used to seeing them yet; the horror hasn't lost its edge.

"I've seen you around here before. Do you require assistance?" Fortress asks, trying to be polite. Awkwardly, he starts to extricate his hand. Dominus hasn't turned his screen to face him, so all he can make out are the bands of paint along the side and the faint glow.

[Pious?] Dominus signs against his palm, his fingers moving with a surprisingly deft touch. Basic glyphs, rather than any advanced shorthand. The strangeness of the situation makes his processor ache.

Fortress resets his optics and plays the glyphs back over in his processor, cautious. It starts with the sub-glyph for a name, not an adjective - he's almost sure of it. [I'm sorry, what? Who?] he signs back, clumsily, careful not to look down at their hands. 

Dominus's hand rips out of Fortress's reach so fast it nearly streaks the paint, and snaps back to his side. His flat screen rotates on his neck, the rest of his body completely unmoving, and the too-smooth, visceral _wrongness_ of the movement tweaks a deep part of Fortress's brain. The fear part. Fortress plasters himself against the wall as the screen swivels to face him, his spark thudding in his chest.

[Be a happy worker! Your shape is your purpose! :)] Dominus's screen states, a brilliant mess of bright pink and yellow text. 

Then it dims back to the default, empty blue. His screen spins all the way back around in a complete circle, and Dominus strides off, arms folded behind his back, his measured pace eating up ground.

Fortress clings to the wall for dear life. He doesn't move until the approach of another guard on patrol drives him to his habsuite. 

-

On the fourth day, they bring Rung back. The usual cohort of scientists and examiners, this time - the lead scientist, an elegant microscope-alt in blue and white, always gives both Fortress and Sweep an absent nod of courtesy while the others lock Rung into his restraints. He's more concerned with the contents of his datapad than he is about what's been done to Rung.

It takes every scrap of Fortress's self-restraint to keep his back welded to the wall until they all leave; Sweep takes a half hour to scrupulously clear the floor beneath Rung, oblivious to the mech strung up overhead as he painstakingly picks up scraps of some unidentifiable substance from the floor. The cleaning seems to drag on forever - Fortress suspects that Sweep takes his time when it's Fortress on guard and not Red Alert - and finally, _finally_ , Sweep shuffles out the door, with a curious slant to his helm as he stares at something in his hand.

As soon as the door closes behind the janitor, Fortress bursts. "What did they do to you?" he asks, the frantic thrum of his spark an even split between relief and fear. Rung _looks_ like he's in one piece - for once - but that doesn't mean _anything_ with the aura of pain and spark-deep exhaustion that clouds the room _._ The way Rung spoke to the Evaluator; the Evaluator's _rage_...

A few seconds pass, filled only by the uneven pattern of Rung's ventilation system. "Nothing that hasn't already been done to me," Rung says, at last. He doesn't bring his optics online, though. Just hangs there, unmoving and unseeing. The dull, pale aqua lens of his unlit eyes looks younger and more vulnerable without the frame of his glasses, which are currently burning a hole in Fortress's shoulder compartment. 

He's just a mech. Small and unarmored and unremarkable in every way. Yet Fortress can detect the scent of burnt wires and scorched metal from across the room. This wasn't an examination - wasn't a punishment - the Evaluator came in here already angry, and decided that Rung was an acceptable, pre-existing target. 

Cameras in his eyes, surveillance devices wired into every corner of the room, and nothing he can do about - any of this. It's horrible, it's _wrong_ , and Fortress is drowning in his own uselessness. 

How is he supposed to protect _anyone_ like this?

Something on the floor crunches under the weight of his foot - did Sweep miss something? - but it's dust under his heel before Fortress can see what he stepped on. He reaches up to open the shoulder compartment, his eyes fixed over Rung's shoulder as he retrieves the glasses. For a moment, stubborn determination almost overrides his common sense as he reaches for the restraint controls - but it's unnecessary. Fortress is tall enough to just reach up and, very gently, fit Rung's glasses back onto his face. 

He can't remember walking over here. The tremor in his arm, an old friend, seems to run through his whole frame. Up close, Rung's agony is a sharp blade that carves up the whole world. There are pale silver scars all around Rung's chest panel in a perfect ring, where someone must have pulled his spark chamber open to insert an electrical prod right into his internals. 

Rung makes a muffled sound as Fortress points his traitorous, watching eyes at the floor and presses the top of his head against the mech's chest. Shaking, he lifts a hand and traces the glyphs out on Rung's arm - his hands are too far away, locked in the cuffs. He's sick with guilt, with this whole place, and he _doesn't know what to do_.

[What can I do? How can I help you?]

Rung doesn't answer. "Hush, now. Close your eyes. Don't look," he says instead. Something small and crystalline bounces off Fortress's wide shoulder armor, but he doesn't really feel it. His whole frame feels so far away, and Rung's voice, gentler than Fortress deserves, is the only thing that sounds real. "It's alright. I've learned to forgive anything."

-

In hindsight, Red Alert needn't have worried about Rung subverting Fortress. He was already broken from the start. 

-

Resonance and Damus's schedules become unpredictable shortly afterward. They're swept up in what Resonance calls 'training,' hour after hour spent in different sections of Evaluation and Castigation, and Fortress sees them for meals only sporadically. Damus's voice sounds a little different each time, as though each time the two of them vanish his vocalizer is tweaked or upgraded to include more tones and modality. There's an inverse correlation between the quality of his voice and the amount that Damus speaks, however. 

Within a week, they've given him a face, and he's dead silent, his new lips gnawed into shreds and his expression haunted.

On the days that Resonance's schedule is too full, Fortress hesitantly takes energon to Whirl's door. Without Resonance to sing out their arrival, Whirl doesn't come near the door. Fortress and his tactical computer completely agree that sticking his hand through one of the holes in the battered door would be a terrible idea on every conceivable level, so he knocks and leaves the cube on the floor. Either Whirl drinks it, or one of the janitorial staff cleans it up: Fortress can't tell which. Once, he catches a glimpse of a narrowed optic peering at him through the door, silent and suspicious; Whirl's claw doesn't emerge until Fortress walks away.

Which means that Fortress blinks and stands there, jaw dropped for a moment, when he rounds the corner to find Whirl waiting outside his door. The mech lounges with one long leg bent to rest against the wall, preoccupied with some small device cupped in his hands. He's muttering to himself, using three needle-thin instruments that extend from the sides of his fingers to tinker with the inner workings of the item in his hands.

Fortress stands there, nonplussed, the energon cube half-forgotten in his hand. Then he collects himself and tentatively approaches Whirl. Who he has seen out of his room once. Ever. He clears his vocalizer with a cough. "Ah. Whirl. Are you doing alright?" he asks.

Whirl slowly turns his helm toward Fortress. Somehow, without a face, he manages to look at Fortress with complete disinterest. "Who wants to know?" he asks, snapping the device in his hand shut with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. He scans Fortress from top to bottom, and, if possible, looks _even more_ unimpressed after he does so.

Fortress has stood in the presence of multiple Councilors, each with the power to have him tortured or dismantled with a word. He has never felt more outclassed in his _life_. His tactical HUD tells him he could bulldoze Whirl through a wall. His _spark_ tells him he wouldn't _dare_. "My name is Fortress Maximus. I, um -"

Whirl emits an incomprehensible noise. "Pffffft. Too long," he drawls, waving his free hand grandly. He tucks the device into his cockpit at the same time, snapping the compartment shut so that the golden windshield obscures it from view. "Who the frag needs a five-syllable name? Ridiculous. Whaddya want, Maxi."

He doesn't even need to think about it. "Right now? For you to never call me that. Ever again," Fortress says. 

Whirl snorts. "Better." He holds out his hand palm up and waggles his fingers pointedly. Fortress hands the energon over, still completely and utterly confused, and Whirl waves him away. "Now buzz off. Time waits for no mech," he says, irony heavy in his field.

Fortress feels like he's getting whiplash. "It's good to see you out of your habsuite -" he starts to say, weakly. He desperately wishes Resonance was around, because his stifled socialization protocols are _not_ capable of handling whatever is happening here. Whirl operates on an entirely different level. 

Raising his arm, Whirl jams his elbow backwards. His habsuite door crashes inward, bent nearly in two. "Can't you see I'm working here?" Whirl asks, throwing his arms up as he stomps inside. "Go find a corner to guard. Stand around and look pretty, or whatever it is you people do when you're not ruining people's lives."

-

[You don't ruin people's lives,] Resonance signs into his wrist.

Fortress would feel horrible for seeking reassurance about this. He knows what he is - or what he's supposed to be. He can't tell whether or not the other security guards and enforcers who do the Council's work are as conflicted inside as him, but that hasn't stopped them from - from - 

He's weak.

[Why did you trust me?] he asks. Now that he's questioned it, he can't stop. They're walking down the same hall where he ran into Resonance that first time, and Fortress can't stop puzzling and worrying away at the strangeness of it all. That Resonance would just - reach out, to a random security guard, and start whispering warnings to him in hand. They couldn't have known Fortress wouldn't turn them in on the spot for teaching him how to subvert the Council's surveillance. They just _did_ it, the knowledge offered freely and without reservation, and Fortress was too lost and adrift at the time to understand what kind of risk Resonance was taking. 

Resonance smiles at him - a little crooked, but warm. [Most security guards don't actually answer when you ask their name. They just tell you to state your business and ask why you're loitering around, wasting time.]

They laugh a little. For the first time Fortress can remember, Resonance's vocalizer sounds hoarse rather than perfectly smooth; training sessions with Damus have taken a toll.

Fortress shakes his head. It's second nature by now, to keep his eyes away from Resonance even as his head moves; his optics constantly trace the walls and corners of any room he enters. [I don't understand how they can enforce any of this. None of this is _just_ ,] he says, the frustration bleeding into his EM field as they approach a junction of two hallways. He needs to return to Rung's vault, and Resonance only has a quarter of an hour before their next session, but they've accompanied him almost all the way to the core.

Another laugh. [And that's why I trust you.] Resonance pats Fortress's arm and starts to step away. [You were much too confused by basic Functionism to be _that_ bad.]

Fortress shakes his head and steps forward as they let go of his hand. Then someone ploughs into him at top speed, knocking him back. They're not strong enough to really upset his balance, and Fortress catches himself on the edge of the wall with a grunt. 

It's Dominus Ambus - the most familiar of the flatscreens in the Cog. Once he processes this, Fortress is more bemused than alarmed. "Oh! Pardon us," Resonance says, startled, as Dominus turns his head to face both of them. It takes Fortress a moment to actually read the words, since he's so used to Dominus displaying Council-mandated propaganda.

When he _does_ read them, Fortress's tanks drop out from under him. [Smile! Smile! Smile! Smile! Smile -] Dominus flashes rapidly, the mood prompt repeating at a frantic pace. His EM field is as cramped as Fortress's, but the alarm is unmistakable. 

Fortress straightens his shoulders so fast his back armor makes a cracking sound. Resonance, their face pale as a sheet, backpedals away from both of them so that there's a perfectly respectable amount of space between each of them when another mech reaches the junction. An empuratee - one Fortress recognizes - his footsteps and system running so silently that Fortress didn't hear him coming until he was right upon them. 

"Soundwave," Fortress says, stiffly. 

The empuratee surveys all of them with a crimson optic, unreadable. When he speaks, his voice is one of the most mechanical Fortress has heard: no inflection, with nothing but the most essential grammar structures. "Gathering: disperse," Soundwave says, emotionlessly. 

Resonance bows. "Yes, sir," they say, and spin around, none of their usual bounce in their step as they walk away. Dominus flashes the exact same words, matching Soundwave for the emotionlessness of his field, and then wanders off down another corridor. One of his usual routes, Fortress notes. Probably the circuit from the center of the Cog through the furthest edge of Evaluation.

"Good to see you again," he tries, feeling unspeakably awkward. On second thought, Soundwave probably doesn't recognize him. Fortress did pretty much nothing worth mentioning during that brief encounter in the city. Soundwave wouldn't have a reason to pay any attention to a random security guard.

And yet -

Fortress shifts, uneasiness prickling in his spark. Soundwave studies him with an unblinking stare, long enough for it to tip over from awkward to...worrying. For a quiet, horrible moment, Fortress feels like Soundwave is staring right through him - like all of his treasonous thoughts and defective loyalties and keen regrets are laid bare under a searing stare -

"Soundwave: indifferent," Soundwave says, with an odd pause in his words.

Before Fortress can try to interpret the curious intonation, Soundwave walks away. 

-

It ends when Resonance and Damus walk into Evaluation. Fortress is on guard by the security checkpoint that leads into the classified area, his mind tethered to his frame only by the thinnest of lines. 

The sight of Resonance walking up to the Evaluator's platform nearly snaps it. All the air sucks out of Fortress in a rush, replaced by cold horror. He recognizes Damus's rust-orange figure next to Resonance a moment later, the two of them and a third, unfamiliar mech, escorted up to the dais by a pair of functionaries. But that doesn't do anything to extinguish the trepidation in his spark.

The Evaluator is no longer furious; with forty aides interfacing with his system, he presides over Evaluation hub with a constant murmur of observations and commands. "The Disseminator will be distributing the next round of optic upgrades along with the corresponding prop holos and notices. Allocate the new workload among the functionaries," he instructs one of the unattached aides, as he dismisses the wall of holographic screens he's been perusing with forty pairs of shared eyes. "The Enactor requires a report on the populace's response to the chronometer changes by the end of timely cycle." 

Then the Councilor turns to Resonance and Damus and the third mech in one smooth motion. Fortress feels like his spark is in his throat, choking, burning. "Sing me something by Pentameter," he orders Resonance, his voice curt, without any build up or explanation.

To their credit, Resonance takes it in stride. They dip a bow and say, "Yes, sir," before reciting a poem in Neocybex. It rolls out of their vocalizer evenly and with pitch-perfect intonation, but compared to the Old Cybertronian suite they performed earlier, it sounds flat and dull. Fortress understands every single word, and yet feels nothing.

The Evaluator cuts them off mid-syllable with a snap of his fingers. Again, as though used to the sudden whims and mood swings of Councilors, Resonance silences their vocalizer without a single stutter. "Enough," the Evaluator says, and beckons Damus. The functionaries bring the third mech forward, the one Fortress doesn't recognize. His unease deepens as his HUD identifies the third mech in bright red.

[Obsolete.]

"Damus. Sing," the Evaluator says.

The hub falls silent. With so many mecha here, strapped to examination tables or examining in turn, Fortress has never seen the room so deathly still. 

At Damus's side, Resonance looks horribly small.

Damus stands there, staring at the obsolete mech. The stranger sits crumpled on their knees, without looking up. Fortress can just barely make out his small, shaking chant from across the room. "...can't. I can't -"

The Evaluator's optic narrows. 

Resonance's hand shoots out and digs deep into the joint of Damus's elbow. "The Turn of the Gear," they prompt Damus, their voice uncompromising and unfamiliar. 

Listing to one side, shuddering, Damus obeys. 

It is somehow worse than Fortress imagined. They improved Damus's vocal quality beyond measure; he can play his own musical accompaniment in addition to his singing.

When his work is done, Damus hunches in on himself, his arms folded tight around his chest.

"Excellent. That's coming along quite nicely." The Evaluator waves a hand, dismissing them. Fortress has a split second to vent with shaky relief, numb as he watches Resonance sketch another bow and tug Damus with them off the platform.

Then the Evaluator speaks again. His voice carries through the room, careless and cruel. "Soon, we should be able to eliminate some of the redundancies here," he says.

Resonance flinches like they've been shot. They continue to pull an insensate Damus toward Fortress's checkpoint, mouth pressed together in a thin line.

Fortress can't let them walk past like that. Damus looks like he's on the verge of collapse, reeling with each step; Fortress reaches out under the pretense of steadying the two exempt mechs before they knock into the side of the door. Resonance's hand finds his own - reckless, here, but Fortress thinks they're past the point of recklessness. That the Evaluator just shoved them over a cliff. 

[Tick tock,] Resonance signs into his hand, with a bark of humorless laughter.

[They can't. You're exempt.] They sound like wafer-thin, tattered justifications before he finishes saying them. His spark is burning, he's on fire with fear and his processor is reeling harder than Damus -

[Not for much longer. Damus renders me obsolete. I'll most likely be recalled in the next harvesting sweep.] Resonance looks straight ahead while saying it. Not being able to meet their optics has never been harder to bear.

Fortress's fingers grow clumsy with desperation. He's barely able to keep the upset out of his EM field. This room, he - he can't stay in this room. The noise starts up again, the screams and the sounds of mecha being peeled apart for examination, and it drones in his audials at a nauseating pitch. When his optics flick toward the Evaluator, all he can see is _red_.  [You're in danger.]

Resonance takes more of Damus's weight, and shakes out their shoulders. [We've always been in danger. I'm sorry,] they say, before withdrawing their hand and setting their jaw.

"I will escort them back to the exemption hallway," Fortress tells the security guard flanking the other side of the security checkpoint. He doesn't recognize the hard authority in his own voice, but the guard salutes an affirmative at once. Fortress falls in behind Resonance and Damus. He doesn't know what his expression looks like - his mask of grave vigilance feels like a transparent gauze over the thunder roiling in his chest.

 _No._

[I won't let them,] he signs against the back of Resonance's hand. [I know the way out.]

-

Fortress marches them all the way through Evaluation to the exemption row, glaring two other guards into submission along the way. He steers Resonance and Damus around the patrol routes of roaming spy bots at a grim, determined pace. 

It's nice, actually. A clarity of purpose, now that he's made his decision.

Damus realizes something's off once he shakes off his despairing fugue; he shoots a wary stare back at Fortress, but Fortress ignores it. His processor discards everything irrelevant - every useless guideline, every pre-programmed file - so he can map out the most direct route to that central elevator, deep in the core of the Cog. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to circumvent the automated security scanners at the entrance. Fortress is cleared for almost every secure area, but the continued absence of the shuttle bay on his internal map suggests that he won't make it without being in the presence of a Councilor. Resonance and Damus, both exemptions with known flight risks, won't make it much further than this. Eventually, Fortress's clearing them to pass through the checkpoints will set off an alarm -

Damus stops in his tracks so abruptly that Fortress almost picks him up to continue charging forward. Every second they delay means another chance for one of the spy bots to deviate from their randomized patrol routes. "What are you -" Damus starts to say, his voice shaky and laced with something - something that _hurts._

Resonance seizes Fortress's hand and Damus's claw, forcing themselves between them as they sketch glyphs out for both. [They're going to recall me. I'm redundant as soon as you're ready.]

Damus flinches, his optics widening as he glances at Fortress wildly, like he expects Fortress to drag Resonance into a smelter before his very eyes. "No. Nonono -" Damus starts to chant, the same broken rhythm as before. 

Shaking their head, Resonance lets go to rest their hands on Damus's shoulders. "Damus. Listen to me," they say out loud, urgently.

Fortress bypasses Resonance and reaches out, signing glyphs onto Damus's raised claw himself. Damus's stare is piercing. [We're leaving.]

"No one can do that. You think I haven't _tried_?!" Damus hisses, trying to rip his claw away.

Slag it all. They don't have _time._ "I know where the exit is. I won't let this happen," Fortress says, with a burst of hot, vicious satisfaction in his chest at the sound of his own voice.

Damus's jaw drops. Resonance whips around wildly, shocked. "I - we can't - they, they'll -" Damus says, tripping over his words.

Then Resonance grins, fierce and unrestrained. They turn back to Damus, their EM field full of barely curtailed fire. "Damus. Do you want to spend the rest of your life killing for the Council?" they demand, shaking him by the shoulders.

Put like that, the answer seems simple. Damus goes totally still. "I've said it before, and I'll say it a thousand times over," he says, quietly, his optics glaring daggers into Fortress's shoulder. " _Slag the Functionists_." He jerks his head toward Fortress, grimly. "Can we trust _him_?"

They're well past that, to Fortress's mind. It feels good to speak freely. "I'm sick of standing around here, doing nothing and watching the Council hurt people. But we need to get one more person," he says, wrapping urgency around them. Another patrolling spy bot is coming down the corridor - easily avoided by taking the next turn. Fortress's tactical computer has ten different escape vectors plotted out. All those hours of wandering Evaluation, looking for an exit, finally coming in handy.

Resonance nods, without asking who. "Right. We should -"

"Well, well, well. So you're finally pulling a runner," someone interrupts. 

Fortress raises the integrated gun in his arm instantaneously and levels it at the source of the voice. He wasn't even aware of activating it. 

Whirl tosses his habsuite door over his shoulder with casual strength. "Whirl!" Resonance says. They reach out to try to force Fortress's arm down.

Fortress resists them with ease, eyeing Whirl with a hard expression. Whirl is a wildcard, at best. "You were listening," he says, as he silently consults the risk assessment. 

But Whirl has [flight risk] in his file, too. Oddly, it's a pun - they've used [flight] as in a flying alt mode. 

Whirl shrugs grandly as he steps right up to Fortress's gun barrel, pressing his helm against it. "What can I say? Someone said the magic words," he says, cackling. "'Slag the Functionists'? _I'm in_."

After a moment's consideration, Fortress retracts the gun. Whirl sighs as though in disappointment, but his frame radiates energy. If this goes south, having a former Corps member around for a brawl won't hurt. Fortress's processor begins to account for Whirl in his estimation of their fighting strength. "How is it that I wound up friends with only political dissidents?" Fortress asks, absently.

Whirl slings an arm around his shoulder - he's the only one there with the height to pull that off. "Sorry, Fort Max. That train's already left the station. You're one of _us_ now."

...It's better than Maxi. "Right. This way," Fortress says. 

Somehow, none of them question his choice of direction until the walls transition to the elaborate decor of the Cog's core. "Right into the area with the highest security in the entire Cog? Brilliant," Whirl says, with bizarre enthusiasm. Fortress just...does not want to ask. Resonance sticks close to him, while Damus lingers at the edges of their group, casting wary glances behind them.

If someone gets close enough to come into visual range before Fortress hears them, they need to be running. More to the point - Fortress throws his arm out, gesturing for the other three to stop, _fast_. Whirl understands the military sign before Damus and Resonance do; he scoops Resonance up off their feet before they can take another step.  [Stay here,] Fortress tells them in chirolinguistics, his mind racing as he processes the presence of an unfamiliar security guard around the corner and down the long hall to Rung's cell. Not Red Alert: Red Alert never advertises his position on the internal map like this.

Fortress ushers them into a side room - a janitorial closet, actually. It's the nearest room without an exhaustive set of security clearances required for entrance. Then he strides out on his own, channeling the burning certainty that's taken over his spark. Of all the mecha in the Cog, he has the unquestioned right to approach the security mech. Protecting Rung is his _function_. 

The guard levels a gun at him the instant Fortress comes into view. Not good. "Halt! This area is under lockdown," the guard orders, his red visor narrow and covered in targeting displays. Strafe; a member of...

A member of the _Convener_ 's security team? That throws Fortress for a moment - what on Cybertron would a member of Convention be doing here? He launches into his prepared explanation, anyway. "I am one of the object's guards. My security clearance -"

Strafe's weapon powers up. "No one is cleared to pass except Councilor One-of-Twelve," he insists. Which only multiplies Fortress's confusion. He came up here prepared to deal with Red Alert, yes - the Evaluator he wasn't concerned about, given that he just saw that Councilor downstairs. An entirely different Councilor, one whom Fortress has never seen before...

"Why? What's happened? I - I need to know, to be able to protect the object to the best of my functionality," he says. A stutter escapes him, and he's floundering again. He can't frag this up, _not now_ , with Rung so close - 

Strafe is unmoved. "Back off. This is a restricted area, and I _will_ open fire."

Well. 

Fortress contemplates his armor. Currently 100% integrated and fully functional. He never did fully adjust to the additions to his shoulders. 

He squares them. "Then I'm sorry. But you're obstructing me," he says.

Then he charges Strafe. Despite everything, the suddenness surprises Strafe; he hesitates for .5 milliseconds before firing, even though the weapon was already primed, and only hits Fortress a single time before Fortress is on him. The guns integrated in his knees, which he readied while Strafe was focused on his face, are ready to fire in silenced mode, but they prove unnecessary. Strafe manages a strangled grunt before Fortress smashes his helm against the wall, knocking him unconscious before the guard can broadcast a warning comm to alert anyone else. The security guard's weapon discharges one more time before Fortress can tear it from his arm -

\- and behind him, someone gasps in pain. " _Slag_ ," they yelp, and it's an unfamiliar voice - but the only people Fortress left behind him were Resonance and Damus and Whirl, and if any of them left the janitor's closet - 

The same kind of shot that left little more than a blackened scorch mark on Fortress's thick armor leaves a hole right through Dominus Ambus's hip, crippling his leg. The wound hisses, metal components crumpled but cauterized, as the flathead staggers back against the wall, screen glitching in a television test signal. Fortress drags Strafe's unconscious frame along with him as he runs back down the corridor to the mech, cursing himself at not having noticed Dominus's approach. He skids to a stop to assess the damage.

Wait. 

Did he. Did he just - 

Fortress's processor stalls out, just in time for Dominus Ambus to - fall apart.

Literally. The flathead's frame just - bursts into its component parts, arms and legs and torso popping apart into segmented chunks of armor plating and internals. 

And two tiny mechs fall to the floor with a clatter. One of them groans, massaging a superficial scorch mark along the side of his.

Uh. Tail. 

Fortress is losing the thread of things, here. He stands there, half-crouched, Strafe's unconscious body loose in his slackening grip as he squints at the two minibots crawling out of Dominus's frame. They are...so small. "Dominus -" the second mech starts to say, kicking a panel of Dominus's chest armor off his legs. [TERMINATED] is the only thing that appears on Fortress's heads-up display when he scans the mech, which helps explain absolutely nothing at all. 

Resonance pushes the door of the janitorial closet all the way open - Fortress remembers telling them to keep it shut, with a twinge of resignation - and Whirl shoves them the rest of the way out with an impatient foot. "Who - you - wait, aren't you a memory stick? I thought you were all recalled!" Resonance says, resetting their optics as though they can't believe what they're seeing.

"Not - oof - not dead yet!" the memory stick says. He rolls off the mech with the turbofox tail, reaches up to grab Dominus's flatscreen head, and pries the camera off the side of the screen. "That's better," he says, after affixing it to his own helm.

The turbofox raises his hand first, claw-tipped fingers patting around feebly until he finds the memory stick's foot. "Rewind -"

"I'm fine, Dommy. Ugh, my back," Rewind says. He stands up and stretches, then helps the turbofox version of Dominus Ambus to his feet. This Dominus has a perfectly normal head with two optics and a mouth, his paint is a completely different color, and, like Rewind, the best Fortress's files can come up with for him is [data unavailable.] No personnel files whatsoever for a Dominus who looks like this. 

Understanding crystallizes, all at once. "You've both been hiding in this larger frame. How?" Fortress asks, nudging the larger Dominus's leg armor to the side so that Rewind and Dominus can clamber out of there.

Dominus coughs gruffly, his face apologetic as he surveys his abandoned shell of a body. "My specialty as a loadbearer. But this is my innermost form, and we -" His extended audials twitch, and his expression darkens. "- we cannot be caught here like this. The next time they try empurata on me, they may well succeed."

His voice is educated and cultured - like one of the scientists who attend Rung. After so long dealing with a voiceless screen at random intervals in the hallway, Fortress just shakes his head and accepts it. 

"And I'm not supposed to exist," Rewind adds, adjusting the camera on the side of his head until the red recording light turns on. "Forget gathering more intel - I've got everything we've found so far archived. We need to get out of here."

Resonance stifles a laugh behind their hand, their visor glittering with wild amusement. "So do we. But this many people -"

"And we still need one more," Fortress says, glancing back over his shoulder. Whoever Dominus heard - maybe the Convener himself - they can't let them stumble across all this mess. 

"You're trying to bring the Useless One," Dominus says, quietly, after only a moment. 

Whirl hisses. "Fragging hell. You've got to be kidding me."

They don't have time for this. Fortress hauls Strafe along and shoves him bodily into the janitor's closet, banging the guard's helm against the wall one more time for good measure. "There's no way someone wasn't monitoring this guard's optic feed. The functionaries will be raise an alert soon," he says, as he turns around and begins collecting pieces of Dominus's outer armor into his arms. Dominus helps him at once, his expression grave as he helps Fortress pile it all on top of Strafe's unconscious form. "And if one of the Council is already in there -"

Dominus raises a hand to stop Fortress's rapid-fire analysis. "Actually, they won't raise an alert. I've hacked all of the Council's spy feeds in the Cog over the past few weeks," he says, his expression perfectly mild. 

"As far as this section of the Cog is concerned, they're getting a pre-recorded feed spliced together from me and Dommy's rounds. It'll take them a while to realize they're watching recycled footage in this sector," Rewind adds, when Fortress just stares at them in incomprehension.

Fortress is grateful that Resonance and Damus look as gobsmacked as he feels. Whirl's optic is unreadable, but he seems to accept all of this incredible news with only a sage nod, like it makes perfect sense to him. "Then let them all go to slag. I'm not leaving Rung here," Fortress says at last, dumping Dominus's old flatscreen on top of Strafe to top off the pile. Then he finds them _another_ janitorial closet around another turn, and jams everyone inside as best he can - Rewind and the irreducible Dominus are, at least, smaller than the Dominus armor was. "Hide. In here. _No one move,_ " he says, with a pointed glance at Whirl. Whirl rolls his optic at Fortress - a distinctly uncomfortable thing to witness. "As far as they know, I'm on guard duty."

Then he goes to Strafe's post, and prays that no one pays any attention to him. _This is where he's supposed to be._

The vault door to Rung's cell irises open only a few minutes later. The familiar figure of a Councilor walks out with a powerful, ground-eating stride. The Convener is gold and orange, with a rich red cape that falls around his feet in heavy, crumpled folds. The lead scientist from Evaluation - Quark - walks at his heels, his expression animated by more emotion than Fortress has ever seen him wear before. Quark looks...fervent. On the verge of ecstatic. 

"This information is not to leave the Cog. I must convene the Council. We cannot afford a...hasty decision," the Convener says, his voice deep and unwavering. 

Quark nods along as he and the Councilor walk past Fortress, without so much as glancing at him. "Of course, sir. Should I have the transformation cog smelted down?"

The Councilor shakes his head sharply. "No. Continue your analysis of the crystals. If necessary, we can -" 

And the two walk out of hearing range, and eventually out of sight. Fortress waits several achingly long minutes, forcing his processor to count down instead of producing mental images of all the myriad ways the Convener could have hurt Rung in his absence. It's supposed to be Red Alert's shift right now, but a visit from a Councilor who isn't the Evaluator is unprecedented. 

Finally, Fortress returns to his cache of exempt mecha and frees them from the closet. "All clear," he tells them, keeping constant mental tabs on his internal map to make sure that's still the case. They need to _hurry_ ; every minute that passes is another minute someone could notice that neither Resonance nor Damus are where they should be.

"We're really busting the main mech himself outta here?" Whirl asks, as they walk up to the vault door.

Fortress scans himself in, impatiently tapping a foot as the security on the door churns an extra minute. Red Alert and his additional security... "I can't leave him. He's suffered too much."

"Can't argue with that logic," Damus mutters. It's the first Fortress has heard him speak in quite some time.

"Someone's still in there," Dominus warns him, as the vault door begins to open.

Fortress already has four guns ready. Whirl is eyeing his knees with indecent interest. "Fine by me," Fortress says, aiming one of the shoulder guns down to what he estimates is Red Alert's eye level. Of everyone in the Cog, Red Alert may be the most paranoid, and will almost certainly have measures in place to fire off an emergency alert.

"We're out of options, and you're out of time," Red Alert is saying as Fortress bursts through the door. He's right beside Rung - Rung is on the floor, half his restraints undone - and Red Alert whirls around at the intrusion, his face pale. " _Freeze!_ " he yells, hoarsely, shoving himself between Fortress and Rung.

"Red Alert, don't!" Rung says. A hacking cough wracks him as he fumbles with a free hand for Red Alert's wrist.

Red Alert yanks his arm out of Rung's reach, his gun's aim shaky as Whirl comes up on Fortress's other side. Fortress stands his ground, unwilling to take his sights off Red Alert for a moment, and is thoroughly unamused when Whirl starts to cackle. "He's seen us. They know. They've _always_ been watching -" Red Alert babbles, fear pouring off him like a torus of ice.

Somehow, it clicks. "Not right now, they're not," Fortress says, slowly. It's hard to make his voice sound calm, especially when he's not willing to lower his own weapon. But he tries. If he can talk Red Alert down - if, all this time, Red Alert has been paranoid for the _same reason_... "You kept trying to warn me away from him."

Red Alert's wavering aim fixes on Fortress again. He sounds close to tears. "Shut up. _Shut up_. I - _how many of you are there?!_ " the head of security demands, despairing, as Rewind and Resonance poke their heads around the edge of the door.

"We're here to rescue you," Resonance calls, helpfully. Fortress grits his teeth and widens his stance, trying to keep as much of his frame between Red Alert and the entrance as he can.

Rung hacks again, his whole frame shaking with the force of his cough. But he manages to get his knee under him and grasp Red Alert's wrist firmly. "Red Alert, please. You need to stand down," Rung says, firmly. 

Red Alert glances at Rung, then back at Fortress. His EM field is full of wild fear and distrust. "It's a trick. You can't trust him," he insists, jabbing the gun toward Fortress. "He's one of those recycled units! Recycled frame, recycled spark, recycled processor. It doesn't matter who he was before - they had their needles in his neck long before they defrosted him!"

Any other day, that might have sent Fortress to his knees. 

Right now, he has a pair of very large-calibre guns activated in his knees. He really can't afford to have an existential crisis. Fortress forces the hideous realization to the back of his mind, and focuses on Red Alert to the exclusion of all else. 

Whirl laughs. "Too late now. We're already in it to win it. So what's it gonna be," he taunts, slapping Fortress on the shoulder. He vibrates just as hard as Red Alert, pent-up violence trembling in his legs.

"Red Alert," Rung repeats. His voice is very soft. His glasses are still cracked; as though anyone would have fixed them for him. He rests a hand very carefully on Red Alert's arm. "Let them help."

And Red Alert cracks. His gun falls sharply to his side, his face frozen in a familiar, distant daze that Fortress knows all too well. "You're all exemptions," Red Alert says, stiltedly, optics flashing from Resonance to Damus as the rest of the group sneaks inside. Then he stares at Fortress and shakes his head, hard. It seems to snap him back to reality; that familiar, cranky glare of mistrust that is Red Alert's default expression finally settles on his face. "You - get - get him down while I handle this," he says, with only a faint stutter, jerking his arm away from Rung. His glare has an extra edge to it as he stalks past Fortress.

Knowing what he knows now, Fortress can't blame him. Just as he can't blame Damus for shying away from _two_ security guards at once. 

Now, though - Fortress deactivates everything and rushes forward. He can finally use those dusty guidelines on how to release Rung's restraints. The work's already half-done thanks to Red Alert; Fortress undoes the last three clamps, then hurriedly stoops to catch Rung when the mech collapses without the support. "I'm here. It's going to be alright," he says, only half believing it himself. 

Out of the cuffs, Rung is even thinner than Fortress thought. His arms feel like brittle rust sticks, and he looks like he could blow away in a strong storm. He can't stand under his own power.

"I believe you," he says.

-

Red Alert has given this a _lot_ of thought. Fortress thought he had accounted for most of the obstacles they would face in his hasty plan for escaping the Cog, but Red Alert has apparently been plotting how to break Rung out of jail for approximately four hundred years. 

More to the point, Red Alert has been voraciously consuming information on the latest surveillance advances on a paranoia-induced bender since before the Functionist Council overturned the old Senate, and has been deactivating and faking his own security tags for centuries. "You're all tagged with tracker chips. Rung was riddled with them," he growls, forcing everyone to lay down so he can start prying up pieces of armor. Fortress stands guard beside the closed door, audial sensors maxed out, with Rung huddled on one shoulder. "Don't even get me _started_ on the optic cameras and the obsolescence chips and the backups and the _backups'_ backups -"

Rewind tries to head him off before Red Alert can start ranting. "The camera feeds are handled. We can worry about removing them later." He taps the side of his helm. "I'm 90% sure me and Dommy don't have backup-backup obsolescence chips, or I would be pretty much slag right now."

Red Alert glowers at the interruption. "They're reserved for high priority prisoners. Which _these people are_ ," he says. Resonance says nothing as Red Alert opens up their forearm and starts digging for a GPS chip.

Dominus joins him on the other side of Resonance. "I can deactivate the main obsolescence chips. The backups are trickier, but no trouble, now," he says, smoothly, withdrawing a cable from his side with a snap. 

"We need to work fast. The Council will be convening; we've only got fifteen minutes before the Authenticator's team arrives to confirm the evaluation," Red Alert counters. 

"Nah," Whirl says, absently. He lounges on the other side of the vault door, across from Fortress, fiddling with something in his hands.

Red Alert's temper is too frayed to let that pass. He glares at Whirl, waving an illicit screwdriver at him with an edge of hysteria in his field. "'Nah'?! NAH?! Who do you think we're dealing with, here?!"

Whirl twists something on the device and looks up, his optic smug. "The guy who makes master chronometers for a living," he says, sweet as acid. He raises the watch out of his palm by a small chain, twirling it a little so that the silver device glints in the artificial light. 

Fortress checks his internal chronometer, and can't tell if there's a difference. He lost track of time in his panic and ensuing determination to reach Rung's vault. If Whirl just changed the time - the same way that the Enactor could -

"Mine beats the Enactor's. _Obviously_ ," Whirl says, stretching luxuriously. "We've got time. They think they've been ordered to come here in, like, an hour."

The glint in Red Alert's optics turns feverish. He points at the floor. "Then lay down. Because I am _not_ a medic."

It is the work of thirty minutes for Red Alert to tear through them all and declare them clear of bugs and tracking devices, his hands moving with agitated speed. He doesn't have the time or ability to avoid setting off pain circuits or damaging major wires as he plucks tracking devices out of everyone's arms and chests and processor chambers, but Fortress bears through it without complaint when his turn comes. Rewind and Dominus are certain they're free of trackers - Dominus's irreducible form has never been seen by a functionary, and Rewind has wandered around sharing Dominus's shell body for weeks without being detected - but Red Alert insists on going through them regardless to double check. The risk of damaging their optics by removing the cameras in a rush is too high - Dominus's assurance that he can subvert the video feed will have to hold up until they can get somewhere more secure than this.

Only Damus successfully waves Red Alert away. "Don't worry about me. I can still glitch anything I touch. The obsolescence chips never last longer than a few minutes in my head," he says gloomily. He refuses to stop fidgeting, picking at the paint of his claws with anxious twists. "With what I can do now, though - I wouldn't dare touch any of you guys."

Finally, Red Alert relents. Rung has to calm him down, talking Red Alert through his insistence that he's forgetting _something_ and needs to check one more time, but eventually Red Alert swallows and removes his extra security from the door so that they can leave without leaving a trace on his old system. "So, where's the exit?" Whirl asks, once they're all out in the hall, Dominus's audials perked and constantly swiveling to scan their surroundings.

"Right this way," Fortress and Red Alert say, almost in unison. Red Alert shoots him a suspicious glare. Fortress studiously ignores it; there's nothing he can do to assuage his fellow guard, at this point, short of getting them out of here in one piece. 

Fortress wonders how much he can trust _himself_. If he really was recycled, and has undergone mnemosurgery, how would he know? 

He pushes it aside again. No one here has answers for him; all he can do is focus on getting them to safety. "What did they find out? Why was the Convener in there with you?" Fortress asks Rung to distract himself, one hand holding Rung carefully against his shoulder as they race through the corridors toward the elevator. They should have started tripping security alarms by now, but Red Alert is _very_ good at what he does.

Rung coughs, the sound mostly stifled except for the vibrations that run through Fortress's armor where his thin chest presses against him. "A member of the janitorial staff found evidence of my function while sweeping the floors. He realized what it was for, and delivered it to one of the head scientists," Rung says, dryly.

Sweep? Fortress blinks in surprise. Two million years, Rung said, and just like that - "What is it? What do you do?" Fortress asks, before he remembers the very first lesson of Cog courtesy Resonance taught him. His field flushes with embarrassment.

Thankfully, Rung just laughs. It isn't tired or bitter; just amused. "Do you know? You're the first person I believe has asked me that out of pure curiosity in over two million years," Rung says, wistfully. Then his tone shifts. "Apparently, I create spark crystals."

It sounds so simple, put like that. Fortress raises an orbital ridge, a little baffled that _no one_ ever thought about that before. He doesn't have much about how hotspots used to function in his preprogrammed files, but surely spark crystals would have been an important part of that. "And you never knew? All this time?" he says, amazed.

Rung sighs. "I can't remember. When you're as old as me, the memories begin to fade."

"Information creep. Eidetic decay," Rewind adds, from where he's swinging under Whirl's arm - Whirl has minimal patience for the shorter bots running under their own power, his loping gait fast enough to outpace both Fortress and Red Alert.

"They never admitted it," Rung murmurs, in an undertone, meant only for Fortress's ears, "but I know the mnemosurgeons went in themselves, trying to find my purpose. But someone beat them to it." His small hand finds Fortress's neck, touching it so lightly Fortress barely feels it through the heavy neck armor. "You and I may never truly remember who we were, Fortress."

They make it all the way to the elevator. They're so close. Red Alert scans his credentials at the door, his brow furrowed with concentration -

And it doesn't open. Red Alert curses. "That should have worked," he hisses, panic creeping into his field. "Why -"

Dominus twitches and spins with a hiss, his armor plates flaring as he kicks his way down out of Whirl's grasp. "Incoming!"

The wrong door opens. One that they ran past already. 

The Councilor steps out with a group of thirteen enforcers, cutting off the only way back from the elevator and effectively sealing them in. One of the enforcers matches Fortress for size, easily - a blue and purple mech with cruel lips, who drags his fingers along the wall with a thin screech of metal on metal. The Councilor turns, his armor a deep red-brown. His golden optic is filled with nothing but righteous conviction as he scans them all.

"I thought so," the Inquisitor says. He tilts his head to the side, judging them all with a glance - and finding them _lacking_. "Did you all really think you could escape?" 

He snaps his fingers, and the enforcers open fire. 

Fortress plants himself, and throws his arms wide. Most of the gunfire skids off his heavy armor, setting off damage alerts in his processor. Nothing he can't handle. Damus isn't behind him, though; he refused to let anyone carry him. A shot hits Damus square in the thigh, sheering off his leg. Another wings under Fortress's arm and slams into Dominus's shoulder, sending him staggering back against Whirl. 

"Damus, no!" Resonance calls, trying to dart out from behind Fortress to reach him. Fortress shoves them back, lowering his helm as the enforcers continue to fire. Damus's leg is leaking, not quite, cauterized. But Fortress can't move without exposing Red Alert to fire. 

Red Alert slams his fist against the security scanner. "The door won't open!" he yells over the cacophony, desperation in his field.

"Cover me," Fortress orders. It's not going to be enough - Red Alert is smaller than him - but Fortress whirls as soon as Red Alert pushes in front of him. Rung's feet kick wildly in the air for a second with the force of his turn.

He punches his fist through the door and rips it away. It's not like they're trying to be subtle, anymore. Whirl grabs the door as soon as Fortress tosses it back to him and wedges it into the floor as another shield. The elevator shaft beyond that is empty, but Fortress is far past caring. "Get them out! All the way down!" he orders Whirl, the only one here who can fly. 

With a whoop, Whirl seizes Dominus again and hooks Resonance around the waist. With Rewind still under his arm, he leaps into the elevator shaft...without transforming. 

Too late now. Fortress starts to edge forward using the stolen door as cover, attempting to reach Damus's prone form. 

The enforcers' fire doesn't let up for an instant. The Inquisitor muses over the sound, his voice carrying with ease. "To think. So many traitors within the Cog. Truly, this calls for an Inquisition," he says, with a deep sigh. "Really. How hard is it to perform a function where all you need to do is _stop people from leaving_." 

Something in Fortress refuses. "No one deserves to be locked up here. If this Council has any authority, I reject it," he shouts back. His spark burns, and his head aches in time with the pulse of gunfire, and _that is not his function_.

The Inquisitor shakes his head, unfazed. "None of you are essential. Return Rung, and then accept your ordained termination. Make your peace with Primus," he says.

"No," Damus says. 

Red Alert flinches as a burst of gunfire catches him across the face, blowing out an optic. Meanwhile, Damus pushes himself upright. Fortress's tactical computer finally notices what the Inquisitor is lying about - no further shots have hit Damus in all this time. They're actively avoiding him, in fact. 

Because they still want him.

Fortress reaches out. "Damus, here!"

Damus looks back over his shoulder and shakes his head. His face looks wretched: a mess of emotions on an unpracticed face. "Go!" he yells back, dragging himself forward on one knee.

When he starts singing, the sound reverberates through the hall. Fortress claps his hands to his audials, cutting the sensors to zero as fast as he can, but it makes no difference to Damus's voice. It shudders through Fortress's spark, a slow, creeping cold.

And that's with Damus facing away from him. The enforcers keel over almost as one. The largest spasms against the wall, his eyes full of hate as he tries to claw his way forward by digging his fingers into the wall. The Inquisitor staggers, holding out one hand as though that will stop the inexorable march of Damus's symphony. 

Damus starts walking forward, away from the elevator. Rung is shaking against Fortress's back, and Fortress realizes dimly that he can't protect Rung from this. 

He grabs Red Alert around the waist, and throws them both bodily down the elevator shaft. He hopes Whirl didn't linger at the bottom.

They land hard.

-

In Red Alert's stolen, stripped down shuttle, Resonance sobs on a bench against the back wall. They won't uncurl from their huddle, face buried in their hands as sparks glitch at the edges of their optics. "We left him. We left him," they repeat, their voice broken.

Fortress unwinds Rung from around his shoulder and sets him down carefully. Then he sits close to Resonance and lets them cry against his arm. He has nothing to add as Red Alert pilots them dangerously low and weaves between the grey skyscrapers, trying to dodge the watchful eyes of the Council's sky-spies. 

"Where are we even going?" Whirl finally asks. It's something Fortress wondered only dully, through the haze of crushing failure. 

"I didn't plan for four extra mechs. My safehouse won't hold us all," Red Alert says, his expression grim and harried as he steers them through another tunnel intended for street traffic. No one is driving, thankfully - the Council has whittled traffic down to almost nothing.

"Down," Rewind says, from where he's staunching the wound in Dominus's shoulder. His camera light is one of the only sources of illumination in the vehicle as Red Alert runs them in stealth mode. "We go down."

-

Rewind and Dominus lead them down, and down, and further down still. Red Alert is reluctant to ditch both his shuttle and his safehouse, both of which he spent years scrupulously inspecting and preparing for the need to conceal himself and Rung from pursuers, but there's no way to fit the shuttle past the lower-most upper strata into the maintenance levels.

"How do we know we can trust these people?" Whirl asks, his voice echoing in the tunnel as they climb down a ladder. Fortress can barely squeeze his shoulders through the compact space; he comes down last, so that if he does get stuck it won't trap the rest of the group. Rung clings to his back still, the thrum of his steadying spark warm against his armor. 

"The Council likes to call the protests 'riots.' It's easier for them to flood the broadcast channels with propaganda than it would be to admit that the deeper you go in Cybertron, the more rebels you find," Dominus says. He drops lightly between layers of rusted-through flooring, leading them further down when they run out of ladders to climb. "The useless and otherwise unemployed have been fortifying themselves down here for years. Organizing. The easiest way to circumvent the Council's sky-spies is to simply never see the sky."

"And they do that by living in the waste disposal tunnels?" Fortress asks, a little skeptical. At least, that's what he _thinks_ they're climbing through. 

Dominus's voice echoes strangely in the odd acoustics of the tunnel. Or maybe it's just that Fortress still isn't used to him having a voice. "No. Deeper. Deeper than I suspect anyone has gone in many, many years," he says.

Rewind adds, "Dommy and I never needed to come down here, before. We realized the resistance needed eyes inside the Cog, but there are only so many ways to pull that off. After we lost Merit, someone else needed to infiltrate the building itself."

Eventually, the tunnels stop resembling tunnels at all. The strata start to overlap in straight ways, forming cavernous systems that look weathered and faded from pressure and age. Dominus leads them down a thin shaft where the sheaves of metal appear to have split over the millennia, leaving a natural channel that winds deeper into Cybertron. Fortress can hear the faint creak of metal in the distance, and the tinny sound of something dripping in the distance. Even the air seems to circulate oddly this deep underground. Resonance stays close to his side, their hand wrapped in his, and says nothing.

"So strange. This all feels so familiar," Rung murmurs into Fortress's audial, as they pass through a hollow space that opens up wide over their heads, the ceiling lost in the unlit shadows above. The floor is carved with strange patterns, with fluted columns rising at uneven intervals. As though this isn't a natural formation, but instead something old and forgotten and long buried.

"There's so much down here," Fortress murmurs back, scanning the walls. He tries to keep his sensors tuned back the way they came, listening for pursuit - but the deeper they go, the less pursuit seems to matter. It hardly feels like they're on the same planet, anymore. No billboards, no towering skyscrapers, no Cog. 

He doesn't miss them. They take another passage down, guided only by Dominus's confidence in his contacts below their feet. Even Whirl's grumbling about being underground trails off after a time, as they delve deeper into the planet.

When Dominus straightens, and slows to a stop, Fortress nearly walks over him. "Co-agents 113, back with friends," Dominus calls, announcing their arrival to what appears to be a rough, craggy cave, with Rewind applying pressure to his shoulder. Fortress can't detect anything around them apart from their own ventilation systems and the hum of several self-repair systems. 

Which is why it comes as a complete surprise when a mech swings a hatch open on the wall. 

"Huh," he says, scratching the side of his helm as he peers down at their group. His optics appear to be only one step up in quality from empurata, but he eyes them with a keen, assessing stare before nodding to himself. He swings the hatch all the way open and grins, clapping Dominus on his good shoulder. "Well, let's get you cleared. Name's Dredger," he says. His smile is lit by the faint light from behind him, wide and welcoming. "Welcome to the underside."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, staring back and forth between Functionist Universe!Dominus and turbofox!Dominus later in MTMTE: ......SON OF A -
> 
> Ironbinder and Dredger are OCs from a [Whirl backstory fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8825416) I wrote a while back. After Ironbinder decided to ruin Whirl's life, Dredger escaped the Functionists by first hiding deep beneath the surface of Cybertron before becoming a Decepticon.
> 
> The underside of Cybertron is vaguely familiar to Rung due to...[another backstory fic,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11186754) where he originally lived in the core of the planet.
> 
> Resonance is (somehow) based on these two panels from A Softer World: "[We can give you a new body, a new voice. You'll miss your parents, and the sun, But you could sing.](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=129)" and "[I sing anyway.](http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=263)"


End file.
